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Omelette Du Retardeur
Break eight fresh eggs in a basin, add a half gill cream, two tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese, half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons of pepper, and sharply whisk for three minutes.
Cut three thin slices lean bacon in very small pieces, place in a large black frying pan with half ounce good butter and briskly fry for three minutes. Drop in eggs, briskly stir with a fork for two minutes and let rest for half a minute; fold up opposite sides to meet in centre, let rest for a minute, turn on a hot dish and serve.
A large folded French omelette, bacon and Parmesan, cooked fast in one pan. The only difficulty is the pace: everything happens inside five minutes, so have the eggs beaten and the bacon rendered before you commit.
- Half a gill of creamA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 4 tablespoons — 1/4 cup. That is generous for eight eggs and will give a soft, almost custardy set.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is generally taken as a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons is half a teaspoon of pepper. That is assertive by modern taste; a quarter teaspoon may suit better alongside salty bacon and Parmesan.
- A large black frying panMeaning a well-blackened cast iron or heavy carbon steel skillet. Ten to twelve inches for eight eggs; anything smaller gives you a thick omelette that will not fold cleanly.
- Whisking three minutesThree minutes of sharp whisking beats real air into the eggs and is part of why this omelette reads as light. Do it just before cooking — a beaten mixture left standing loses the volume.
- Fat balanceHalf an ounce of butter is one tablespoon, and the bacon will render more. If your bacon is very lean, add butter rather than let the pan go dry; if it renders heavily, pour some off before the eggs go in.
- The two minutes that matterStirring with a fork for two minutes over decent heat sets curds while the centre stays loose. Stop while it still looks slightly underdone — the half-minute rest and the fold finish the cooking, and an omelette taken past that point turns dry and squeaky.
- BaconCut three thin rashers into small dice and fry only until the fat runs and the edges colour. Three minutes of brisk frying will crisp them; if they blacken they will be bitter in a dish this delicate.
- YieldEight eggs makes one large omelette serving three to four. Serve immediately on a warmed plate; it does not hold.
Alexander Filippini, long the chef at Delmonico's in New York, filled The International Cook Book (1906) with variations on the plain French omelette, many of them given fanciful names. The name appears to draw on the French retarder, to delay, though what Filippini meant by it is not recorded. The technique described here is the classic one: rapid agitation with a fork to build curds, a brief rest to set the base, then a fold rather than a flip. Parmesan and bacon in the same omelette may suggest something of the mixed French and Italian influences at work in American hotel kitchens of the period.