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Omelette, Demi-Souffle
Place the yolks of eight fresh eggs in a bowl and the whites in a copper basin. Stir the yolks with a wooden spoon for five minutes. Beat up the whites with a whisk, but not quite to a froth, and add to the yolks with half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons white pepper, a saltspoon grated nutmeg and half gill thick cream. Mix well with a spoon. Heat one tablespoon butter in a large frying pan, drop in the eggs, mix with a fork for two minutes let rest for half a minute, fold up the two opposite sides to meet right in the centre. Let rest for half minute, turn upon a hot dish and immediately send to the table.
A French-style folded omelette lightened with partly beaten whites — the "demi-soufflé" is the half-measure between a flat omelette and a true soufflé. Everything depends on not overbeating and not overcooking.
- The hinge: underbeat the whitesThe instruction "not quite to a froth" is the whole point. Beat only until the whites are loose, foamy and still pourable — no soft peaks. Stiff whites turn this into a soufflé omelette that will need oven finishing and will collapse on the plate.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of white pepper is half a teaspoon and a saltspoon of nutmeg is a quarter teaspoon. Half a gill is about a quarter cup (roughly 60 ml) of heavy cream.
- The copper basinCopper reacts with egg white to stabilise the foam; the recipe simply calls for a copper basin without saying why. Since the whites here are deliberately underbeaten, any clean non-plastic bowl works; a stainless or glass bowl is fine.
- Stirring the yolksFive minutes with a wooden spoon is not idle work — it breaks the yolks down until they are pale and fluid, so they combine with the whites without streaking. Two to three minutes of brisk work gets you there with a modern whisk.
- Pan and heatEight eggs is a lot for one pan; use a 12-inch nonstick or well-seasoned skillet over medium heat. Too small a pan gives a thick, wet centre that cannot be folded cleanly.
- TimingTwo minutes of stirring with a fork, thirty seconds of rest, fold, thirty seconds more. Total time on the heat is about three minutes. The interior should still be visibly moist when it leaves the pan — it sets on the hot dish.
- Turn out, do not lift out"Turn upon a hot dish" means inverting the pan so the folded omelette rolls onto the plate seam-side down. Warm the plate first; a cold plate pulls the heat out of a barely-set omelette immediately.
- YieldEight eggs and cream serve four generously as a first course or lunch dish, two or three as a main.
Alexander (Alessandro) Filippini, long the chef at Delmonico's in New York, compiled The International Cook Book (1906) from the restaurant repertoire, and its omelette section runs to dozens of variations. The demi-soufflé sits between the plain rolled French omelette and the fully risen omelette soufflée that was served sweet as a dessert: the whites are lightened just enough to give body without committing the cook to an oven or to the certainty of collapse. Copper bowls for egg whites, specified here as a matter of course, reflect a professional kitchen practice that long predated any understanding of the chemistry in in the white were understood; cookbooks of the period simply recorded that copper worked.