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Omelette, Airolaise
Heat a tablespoon fresh butter in small saucepan, add one ounce raw, lean ham cut in exceedingly small square pieces, with two chopped shallots, then gently cook for five minutes, stirring once in a while. Peel, cut in half and remove seeds from a ripe, sound tomato, finely chop and add to saucepan, with half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, two tablespoons white wine, two saltspoons white pepper, mix a little and briskly cook for five minutes. Lightly rub the interior of a bowl with a bean sound garlic, carefully crack in eight fresh eggs, add a half gill cream, tablespoon grated Swiss cheese, half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons white pepper, and sharply beat up with a fork for three minutes. Place an ounce fresh butter in a black frying pan, and when thoroughly hot drop in eggs and briskly mix at bottom with a fork for one minute. Add first preparation, sharply and continually stir for a minute, let rest for half a minute; fold up opposite sides to meet in centre, let rest for a minute, rapidly turn omelette on a hot dish and serve.
A large filled omelette in the Delmonico's manner: a quick tomato-ham-shallot compote folded into eight eggs. Everything hinges on speed, so have the filling made and warm before the eggs meet the pan.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so "two saltspoons white pepper" is half a teaspoon — assertive but intended. A gill is half a cup, making the half gill of cream about four tablespoons (1/4 cup).
- "A bean sound garlic"The phrasing is garbled in the original; it means a piece of sound (unblemished) garlic about the size of a bean, used only to perfume the bowl. Rub and discard — no garlic goes into the eggs.
- Raw hamHere this most likely means uncooked cured ham of the prosciutto crudo type, cut into tiny dice, rather than fresh pork. The recipe calls for it lean, so expect little fat from it; a dry-cured ham or speck does the job.
- The black frying panAn uncoated carbon-steel or cast-iron pan, well seasoned. Get it properly hot before the butter goes in, and use a 10- to 12-inch pan for eight eggs — anything smaller gives a thick, slow-setting omelette that will not roll.
- Drain the fillingTwo tablespoons of wine plus tomato juice will slacken the eggs and split the omelette if the compote is still wet. Cook it down until the pan is nearly dry, then keep it warm.
- TimingThe written times are generous for modern taste. The minute of brisk stirring, the minute after the filling goes in, and the short rests total roughly three and a half minutes of pan time, which will give a set, faintly browned omelette rather than a runny French one — pull it earlier if you want the centre baveuse.
- Folding and turning"Fold up opposite sides to meet in centre" is the old three-fold, not a half-moon. Tilting the pan and rolling the omelette out onto the hot dish is easier than trying to invert it.
- YieldEight eggs with filling serves four generously as a lunch or supper dish, three if it is the centre of the meal.
The name points to Airolo, the Swiss village at the southern mouth of the Gotthard, and the cheese in the eggs is often said to be the signature: Alpine gruyère-type cheese is traditionally associated with the wealth of those valleys, and nineteenth-century restaurant French is generally said to have attached place-names to garnishes containing it. The tomato, shallot and cured ham belong equally to the Ticinese side of the pass, where Italian cooking begins. Attributions like this were often loose — the suffix -aise signalled a style to a diner reading a menu rather than a documented local dish — so the connection is best treated as traditional. The recipe's manner, with its saltspoons, its "black frying pan" and its stopwatch instructions, is that of a professional kitchen writing down what a line cook already knew by hand, which is exactly the register of this book: precise about quantity, silent about anything a trained cook would find obvious.