No. 3059

Rum Omelet

Omelette au Rhum

Beat up seven or eight eggs in a bowl and add to them a grain of salt, two spoonfuls of powdered sugar and a spoonful of good rum. Warm a little butter in a pan and pour in the beaten eggs, thickening them over a brisk fire stirring with a large fork. Fold over the omelet as fast as it detaches from the pan, and invert it with one stroke on a long dish; strew its entire surface with powdered sugar and glaze it with an omelet iron heated in the fire, decorating the top any desired fashion. Serve the omelet after pouring a few spoonfuls of rum with a little syrup into the bottom of the dish and setting it on fire.

← No. 3058 Frangipane Omelet Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3060 Omelet Souffle, Ancient Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

A sweet omelet from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, finished with a caramelized sugar crust and a rum flame. The whole thing takes about three minutes at the stove, so have the dish, sugar, and warmed rum standing by before the eggs go in.

The hinge: cook fast, fold softSugar makes the surface brown much faster, and a sweet omelet that is cooked through is leathery. Keep the pan hot, stir with the fork until the curd is barely thickened, then fold and turn it out while the centre is still loose.
"A grain of salt" and "spoonfuls"A grain of salt is simply a pinch. An unqualified "spoonful" here is most likely a tablespoon, so read this as roughly two tablespoons of sugar and one of rum in the eggs.
Powdered sugarIn 1894 this means sugar ground fine, not modern confectioners' sugar cut with cornstarch. Superfine (caster) sugar is the closer match and glazes more cleanly.
"A brisk fire"High heat. The pan should be hot enough that the butter foams and just begins to colour before the eggs go in; an eight- or nine-inch nonstick or well-seasoned steel pan suits seven eggs.
The omelet ironA flat iron heated red in the coals and passed over the sugar to caramelize it — essentially the old salamander iron under another name. A kitchen blowtorch does the same job; a very hot broiler will work if the omelet goes under for well under a minute, but it will keep cooking the eggs.
Flaming the rumWarm the rum and syrup gently first — cold spirit will not light. Pour it into the dish away from the stove, light it at arm's length with a long match, and keep the bottle off the table. Do not pour from the bottle into a lit dish.
The syrupPresumably a plain sugar syrup. A spoonful or two keeps the rum from burning off instantly and leaves a sauce in the dish.
YieldSeven or eight eggs makes a single large omelet for three or four at the end of a meal.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in some 3,500 numbered receipts. The rum omelet sits in a long run of sweet omelets — frangipane, soufflé, jam — that were standard entremets in nineteenth-century French service, sent out hot after the roast when a heavy pudding would have been too much. The flaming finish belongs to the same theatrical dining-room tradition that is often said to have produced crêpes Suzette and cherries jubilee, though the origin stories for both are disputed anecdote: the dish is finished in front of the guest, and the glazed sugar crust with its scored decoration was the pastry cook's signature on a plate that was, underneath, only eggs and butter.