No. 3069

Omelet with Fruits, Meringued

Omelette aux Fruits Meringuee

Prepare an omelet with ten beaten eggs, a grain of salt, powdered sugar, butter and raw cream, the same as for frangipane omelet (No. 3058). With this preparation and some clarified butter cook a dozen omelets in a small frying pan and when done spread them at once on a baking sheet; brush the surfaces on one side only with apricot marmalade (No. 3675), bestrew with a fine salpicon of assorted candied fruits and roll up the omelets, cut off the ends and divide each one in two; spread them over with more marmalade and dress in a pyramid on a dish; scatter over more of the same salpicon, then cover the entire pyramid with meringue prepared as for snow eggs (No. 3163); smooth this neatly and decorate it through a cornet; dredge over powdered sugar and poach the whole in a slack oven, setting the dish on top of a thick baking tin.

← No. 3068 Omelet Stuffed with Strawberries Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3070 Omelet with Puree of Spinach—Sweet →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you can read across his numbered cross-references; the dish is really three simple components — thin sweet omelets, an apricot-and-candied-fruit filling, and a soft meringue jacket set in a cool oven. The hinge is the oven: a slack oven means low, and the meringue is meant to dry and colour faintly, not brown.

Slack ovenAround 275-300F. The pyramid is being poached rather than baked, so the meringue firms without weeping or cracking. The "thick baking tin" set under the dish is a heat buffer, the same job a doubled sheet pan does today.
A grain of saltA pinch: the smallest amount you can take between finger and thumb, not the apothecary's grain.
SalpiconA fine, even dice — here of assorted candied fruits, roughly 1/8 inch. Cut them yourself rather than using pre-chopped mixed peel, which is usually too wet and too coarse for the roll to hold its shape.
Apricot marmaladeNot citrus marmalade. This is apricot jam cooked down and sieved smooth, the standard pastry glaze; modern apricot preserves warmed, sieved and reduced slightly will do the same work.
Meringue as for snow eggsThe oeufs a la neige meringue is a plain French meringue, whites whipped stiff with powdered sugar. It is soft enough to spread and pipe but stiff enough to hold a smooth face on the pyramid.
CornetA paper cone rolled from parchment, used as a piping bag. Any small piping bag with a star or plain tip replaces it.
The omeletsTwelve omelets from ten eggs means each uses a scant egg's worth of batter, cooked flat and thin in a small pan, perhaps 6 inches. Roll them while still warm and pliable; a cooled sweet omelet cracks.
YieldTwelve omelets halved gives twenty-four pieces. It should go to table promptly, as the meringue will soften over the warm fruit.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled from some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it shows the house style plainly: a simple thing — a sweet omelet — built up into architecture. Sweet omelets belonged firmly to the entremets course in French service, served hot after the roast, and the nineteenth-century kitchen made dozens of them, from the plain omelette au sucre to versions flambeed, jellied, or, as here, stacked into a pyramid and sheathed in meringue that is set rather than browned. The construction is the same logic as baked Alaska, which Ranhofer also served at Delmonico's: meringue as an insulating, decorative shell built over a filling that must not overcook. The candied-fruit salpicon points to the same larder that supplied the period's tutti-frutti ices and English-style plum puddings — glaceed cherries, angelica, citron and orange peel, kept year-round in a professional pastry department.