No. 2907

Spanish Omelet

Omelette a l'Espagnole

This is to be prepared with a tablespoonful of chopped onion, as much peeled and cut-up green pepper, half a crushed clove of garlic and one peeled tomato cut across in two, pressed and divided into quarter-inch squares; fry the onion, garlic and the pepper colorless in oil, add the tomatoes and cover the saucepan; let simmer for fifteen minutes, seasoning with salt and pepper. Break six eggs in a bowl, beat well, season and mix in a third part of the preparation. Make a mellow omelet, fill the center with the solid remaining part and pour the sauce around the whole. Instead of mixing the tomato preparation with the eggs the omelet can be filled with it when made. Pour around a little half-glaze sauce (No. 413).

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's Spanish omelet is a French rolled omelet with a cooked pepper-tomato garnish, not the flat Spanish tortilla. Six eggs is one large omelet for two, or two smaller three-egg omelets, which is easier to control.

The hinge: a mellow omelet"Mellow" here appears to mean what a French kitchen would call baveuse — set outside, still creamy and loose within. Work in a well-seasoned or nonstick 9-10 inch pan over medium-high heat, stirring the eggs for 30-45 seconds, then let the base set, roll it out, and stop. An omelet held on the heat until dry cannot be rescued by the sauce.
Drain the garnishThe tomato-pepper mixture should be nearly dry after its fifteen minutes, or it will weep into the eggs and split the omelet. If it still looks wet, uncover the pan for the last few minutes and cook the liquid off.
"Colorless" fryingSweat the onion, garlic and pepper in oil over low heat without browning, five to eight minutes. Any color here reads as a different, heavier dish; the point of the garnish is a clean sweet-pepper flavor.
Green pepperA 19th-century "green pepper" here is a mild green bell or a similar frying pepper, peeled as the recipe directs, though it gives no reason. Roasting or blistering it briefly makes the skin slip off; a vegetable peeler also works on a flat-sided pepper.
Half-glaze sauceNo. 413 is demi-glace: brown veal or beef stock reduced with espagnole. A well-reduced brown stock, or a good store-bought demi-glace, is the practical substitute. A few tablespoons poured in a ribbon around the plate is the intent, not a pool.
Two ways of building itEither fold a third of the garnish into the beaten eggs and spoon the rest into the center, as written, or keep the eggs plain and use all the garnish as a filling, which the recipe also offers. The second gives a cleaner yellow exterior.
QuantitiesOne tablespoon each of onion and pepper, half a clove of garlic and one tomato is a modest amount of garnish for six eggs, and the dish is finished with demi-glace poured around. Scale the vegetables up if you want a fuller filling, but keep the mixture dry.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete professional reference, and its egg chapter runs to dozens of numbered omelets distinguished only by garnish — the classical French system of naming a dish by what goes into or around it. À l'espagnole in that vocabulary signals tomato, onion and sweet pepper, the ingredients French cooks associated with Spain, rather than any specific Spanish dish; the actual Spanish tortilla is a thick flat cake of egg and potato and would not have been recognized in this form. The demi-glace poured around the plate is characteristic of the period and of the house: even a supper omelet was expected to arrive with a reduction of brown stock that a kitchen brigade already had simmering.