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Omelette, Italienne
Heat a tablespoon butter in a saucepan, add half a finely chopped onion and brown for five minutes, lightly mixing meanwhile; pour in a teaspoon sherry, one gill demi-glace and half gill tomato sauce. Finely chop up six heads canned mushrooms and add to the sauce with half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley; lightly mix and let boil for ten minutes. Prepare a plain omelette, turn it upon a hot dish, pour the sauce over and serve.
A plain omelette given a small brown sauce; the work is all in the pan of sauce, which can be made ahead and reheated. The only real decision is how thin the omelette is when the sauce hits it.
- A gillHalf a cup, or 4 fl oz. So one gill demi-glace is 1/2 cup and half a gill of tomato sauce is 1/4 cup, giving about 3/4 cup of liquid before it is boiled down.
- Demi-glaceA brown veal or beef stock reduced with a brown roux until it coats a spoon. Sold refrigerated or frozen in small tubs, or as a concentrate to dilute; a heavily reduced homemade beef stock will stand in, though it will be looser and less glossy.
- Tomato sauce means the classical oneNot a pasta sauce or ketchup, but a lightly thickened cooked tomato sauce built on stock and aromatics rather than one seasoned to be eaten on its own. Canned tomato passata simmered down with a little butter is close enough, since it is only a quarter cup against a half cup of demi-glace.
- Heads of canned mushroomsWhole button caps packed in brine, once a standard pantry item. Six caps gives only a few tablespoons chopped, perhaps up to a scant 1/2 cup; drained canned buttons still work, and fresh mushrooms sauteed with the onion give a cleaner flavour.
- The onionHalf an onion, chopped very fine, browned in a tablespoon of butter for five minutes over medium heat. Take it to a genuine light brown rather than pale and soft, since that colour is most of the sauce's depth.
- Boiling the sauce ten minutesThis is a reduction, not just heating through. Expect it to tighten noticeably; if it goes past a coating consistency, loosen it with a spoonful of stock rather than water.
- The hinge: cook the omelette lastHave the sauce finished and hot before the eggs go in the pan. A plain French omelette wants about two minutes over brisk heat and should come out barely set inside, then be rolled onto the hot plate and sauced immediately.
- YieldThe original gives no egg count. Three eggs makes one serving; the sauce as written is generous for one and adequate for two three-egg omelettes.
The International Cook Book belongs to a run of early twentieth-century American volumes that translated restaurant practice for home cooks, and this recipe shows the machinery of that kitchen plainly: everything hangs on demi-glace and tomato sauce already standing ready, the brown and red bases from which a professional larder built dozens of garnishes. In that system a dish named for a place was usually named for its sauce rather than for any regional cooking, and "a l'italienne" was the standard label for a brown sauce with finely chopped mushrooms, shallot or onion, and parsley hat that that that" that Escoffier and his contemporaries codified and applied to eggs, veal, macaroni and grilled meats alike. The canned mushroom "heads" date the page as much as anything: tinned button mushrooms were an ordinary convenience by 1900, and counting them was simply a convenient way of specifying quantity.