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Omelette, Lyonnaise
Finely mince two medium-sized, sound white onions. Place them in a black frying pan with one tablespoon melted butter and lightly brown for six minutes, stirring quite frequently meanwhile.
Carefully crack eight fresh eggs into a bowl. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper, adding half gill cold milk. Sharply beat up with fork for two minutes, drop the preparation over the onions, finish the omelette and serve.
A straightforward French onion omelette, written for a cook who already knows how to finish one. Two points in the original need translating, and the onion step deserves more time than it is given.
- Half a gill of milkA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 2 fl oz, or 4 tablespoons " about 1.5 teaspoons of milk per egg. That is a workable proportion; much more and the eggs weep in the pan.
- Six minutes is not enoughTwo minced onions in one tablespoon of butter will still be sharp and slightly raw at six minutes over anything but high heat. Give them 10 to 12 minutes over medium, until soft and lightly golden, or the finished omelette tastes of hot raw onion.
- A black frying panMost likely cast iron or carbon steel, well seasoned; the phrase probably marks it off from tinned or enamelled ware. Any well-seasoned or nonstick 10-inch pan works; eight eggs need that much surface, and a smaller pan gives you scrambled eggs with onions.
- SeasoningA full teaspoon of salt for eight eggs is on the generous side by modern palates. Half to three-quarters of a teaspoon is safer, especially since the butter and onions carry flavour of their own.
- Finish the omeletteThe book leaves this to the cook. The usual French handling: pour the eggs in, stir briskly with the flat of a fork for a few seconds, then let the base set while lifting the edges, and roll or fold it out onto the plate while the centre is still slightly loose. Total pan time is under three minutes.
- YieldEight eggs makes one large omelette to divide among three or four, or two smaller omelettes cooked in succession — the latter gives a better texture.
Anything called lyonnaise in a French kitchen means onions, Lyon being long associated with them in cookery nomenclature; the same convention gives us pommes lyonnaise, sauteed potatoes with browned onion.