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Omelette Aux Croutons
Carefully crack eight fresh eggs in a bowl, add half gill milk; season with half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons white pepper; sharply beat up with a fork for two minutes. Cut out from a loaf of sandwich bread three slices quarter of an inch thick, trim off the crust and cut the bread into quarter-inch square pieces. Place a tablespoon of vinegar on a plate and lightly roll in the croutons.
Heat one and a half tablespoons melted butter in a frying pan, add the croutons and fry to a good light colour, then pour the beaten eggs into the pan; mix with a fork for two minutes, let rest for half minute; fold up both ends to meet right in the centre, let rest for one minute, turn upon a large hot dish and serve.
A plain French-style omelette with fried bread cubes folded in. Two things in the original need attention before you start: the amount of pepper, and the vinegar.
- Half a gill of milkA gill is half a cup, so this is 4 tablespoons — a generous but workable amount for eight eggs. If you want a firmer, more classic French omelette, cut it to 2 tablespoons or leave it out entirely.
- Two saltspoons of pepperA saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon, giving half a teaspoon of white pepper. That is aggressive by modern taste; a quarter teaspoon is closer to what most cooks want, and white pepper from an old tin turns musty rather than hot.
- The vinegarRolling the croutons in a tablespoon of vinegar before frying is unusual and reads oddly today. It gives a faint sharpness that cuts the butter and eggs, but if it does not appeal, skip it — the recipe works without.
- Crouton sizeQuarter-inch dice from quarter-inch slices of soft sandwich bread. Slightly stale bread dices far more cleanly than fresh. Fry them to light gold only; anything darker will taste burnt inside a mild omelette.
- Butter and panA tablespoon and a half of butter is barely enough for both the croutons and the eggs. Use 2 tablespoons in a 10- to 12-inch nonstick or well-seasoned pan over medium heat, and add a little more when the eggs go in if the pan looks dry.
- Timing"Mix with a fork for two minutes" assumes moderate heat and a heavy pan. Watch the eggs rather than the clock: stir until they are mostly set but still glossy and wet on top, then stop, let the bottom firm for 30 seconds, and fold.
- FoldingFolding both ends to the centre gives a rolled cushion rather than the half-moon fold common now. Slide the omelette out seam-side down onto a warmed platter; a cold plate ruins the texture in under a minute.
- YieldEight eggs in one pan serves about four, or three if it is the main dish. If your largest pan is under 10 inches, make two omelettes of four eggs each instead of crowding one.
Omelette aux croûtons belongs to the long list of garnished omelettes that French professional kitchens turned out as a matter of routine — the same egg base, varied by whatever was folded in: herbs, cheese, ham, mushrooms, kidneys, or, as here, fried bread. Croûton simply means "little crust," and the fried-bread cube was one of the cheapest ways a kitchen could add texture and richness to a soft dish, which is why croutons turn up in soups, on spinach, and around roasts throughout cookbooks of this period. The terse, numbered-quantity style of the instructions here — count the eggs, measure the gill, beat two minutes — reads more like the voice of the hotel and restaurant manual than the domestic cookbook, as though written for a cook who already knew what a finished omelette should look like and only needed the proportions. The vinegar on the croutons is the one flourish that seems to date the recipe; sharp, acidic seasoning used in small amounts to lift fat is often said to have been more common in nineteenth-century cooking than it is now.