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Omelette, Chambery
Crack eight fresh eggs in a bowl, add half gill milk, half saltspoon salt, two saltspoons pepper, a tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese, and sharply beat with fork for two minutes. Cut in exceedingly small square pieces a medium-sized, peeled raw potato and one medium, peeled white onion cut same way; place both in a frying pan with tablespoon melted butter and gently fry a nice golden colour, frequently tossing meanwhile. Sprinkle over a saltspoon salt, toss a little, then drop in the eggs, briskly stir with fork for two minutes and let rest half a minute; fold opposite sides to meet in centre, let rest a minute, turn on a hot dish and serve.
A Savoyard potato-and-onion omelette, made in one pan and folded rather than rolled. The measurements are Edwardian restaurant shorthand and need translating before you start.
- Saltspoons and gillsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the half-saltspoon in the eggs is about 1/8 tsp and the two saltspoons of pepper a full 1/2 tsp; a further saltspoon (1/4 tsp) of salt goes over the potato later. Half a gill is 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) on the American 4 fl oz gill, rather more on the imperial 5 fl oz one.
- Cook the potato through firstThis is the hinge. Raw potato cut small still wants 8-10 minutes over moderate heat before it is tender, and the recipe sets no time for the frying at all, only "gently fry a nice golden colour", which is easily hurried and leaves the potato chalky. Fry the dice until they are soft inside and golden outside, then add the onion, which colours faster.
- More fat than a tablespoonOne tablespoon of butter will not carry a potato through a frying pan without scorching. Two to three tablespoons, or butter with a little oil to raise the smoke point, gets the golden colour the recipe asks for without burning the milk solids.
- Pan sizeEight eggs plus a potato and an onion need a 10- to 12-inch pan. In anything smaller the omelette sets thick and the fold will crack.
- ParmesanA tablespoon of grated Parmesan across eight eggs is seasoning rather than flavour; the point is the savoury edge, not cheesiness. Grate it finely so it disperses in the beating.
- The folding"Fold opposite sides to meet in centre" makes a three-fold envelope, not a half-moon. The half-minute rest before folding and the minute after are there to let the base set enough to hold; keep the heat low for both or the underside toughens.
- YieldEight eggs serves four generously as a lunch or supper dish, or six as part of a larger meal. It is best eaten straight from the pan — reheated, the potato goes leaden.
Chambéry is the old capital of Savoy, in the French Alps near the Italian border, and the recipe reads like the place: a French folded omelette carrying a potato-and-onion filling of the kind found on both sides of that frontier, finished with a spoonful of Parmesan rather than Gruyère. The dish belongs to a long line of thrifty egg cookery in which a single potato and one onion stretch eggs into a meal, cousin to the Spanish tortilla and the Italian frittata, though here the eggs are folded soft rather than set firm and turned. Its appearance in a general "international" collection reflects the habit of grand-hotel and restaurant cooking around 1900, when kitchens catalogued dishes under place names — Lyonnaise, Parmentier — as a kind of shorthand for the garnish. Chambéry, though, is not a codified garnish term in the classical repertory, and the Savoyard attribution here rests on the name alone.