No. 3058

Frangipane Omelet

Omelette a la Frangipane

Prepare a frangipane cream with vanilla and almonds (No. 44). Beat up ten eggs in a vessel with a grain of salt, two tablespoonfuls of sugar and the same of melted butter; dilute the whole with a gill of cream. Make with this a dozen small omelets in a pancake pan buttered with clarified butter; after taking them from the pan, slip them on a baking tin and cover over one side with a layer of the prepared frangipane; fold them up flat and cut off the ends, bestrew with powdered sugar and glaze under a salamander (Fig. 123), then dress in a pyramid.

← No. 3057 Celestine Omelet with Whipped Cream Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3059 Rum Omelet →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's omelette here is closer to a thin French pancake than to a folded breakfast omelet, and the whole dish depends on a separate preparation, the frangipane cream of his No. 44. Make that first and have it warm and spreadable before any egg hits the pan.

Frangipane cream, not almond pasteIn nineteenth-century usage frangipane is a cooked pastry cream — milk, eggs, sugar, flour — flavoured with almonds and vanilla, rather than the raw almond-and-butter filling sold under the name today; Ranhofer sends you to his No. 44 for the formula. It should be thick enough to hold a spread but soft enough not to tear the egg sheet; loosen it with a spoonful of warm milk if it has set firm.
A gillHalf a cup, 4 fluid ounces. With ten eggs that gives a batter loose enough to run thin in the pan.
The pancake panA crêpe or omelet pan of the sort used for thin pancakes. Ten eggs plus a gill of cream divided into twelve comes to something like a quarter cup of batter each — swirl to coat, cook until just set, and do not let it colour beyond pale gold or it will crack when folded.
Clarified butterSpecified because whole butter's milk solids scorch over the repeated high heat of twelve successive omelets. Clarify a stick ahead and brush the pan between each.
SalamanderIn Ranhofer's kitchen this was a heated iron held over the dish (his Fig. 123); the modern equivalent is an overhead broiler. Set the rack close, dust the folded omelets evenly with powdered sugar, and glaze in under a minute — the sugar goes from caramel to burnt very quickly, and the egg beneath is already cooked.
Fold them up flat and cut off the endsFold once over the cream to make a flat rectangle or half-moon, then trim the ragged edges square with a knife so the twelve stack cleanly. The trimming is what makes the pyramid look deliberate rather than piled.
TimingAssemble and glaze at the last moment. Frangipane-filled omelets sitting under a warmer weep and soften, and the sugar glaze turns sticky within minutes.
YieldTwelve small omelets; Ranhofer does not state how many covers they serve.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the vast record of his cooking at Delmonico's in New York, where the sweet omelet was a standard closing entremets — the numbers on either side of it, a célestine omelet with whipped cream and a rum omelet, show how many variations one kitchen kept in rotation. Frangipane cream is a fixture of nineteenth-century French pastry, a crème pâtissière carrying pounded almonds; the name is generally traced to a Roman family, the Frangipani, one of whom is said to have devised an almond-scented glove perfume that pastry cooks later imitated in flavour. Whether or not that story holds, by Ranhofer's day "frangipane" meant a specific cream with a numbered formula, which is why he simply cross-references No. 44 and moves on. The dish also shows the priorities of a large brigade kitchen: twelve individual omelets, trimmed, glazed and stacked into a pyramid, all of that labour spent entirely on presentation.