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Omelette, Maitre D'Hotel
Break eight fresh eggs in a bowl, add half gill cream, half teaspoon each freshly chopped parsley and chives, the juice of a quarter sound lemon, half teaspoon salt, three saltspoons pepper, and sharply beat up with a fork for two minutes. Heat an ounce good butter in a black frying pan, drop in eggs, sharply mix with fork for two minutes and let rest half a minute; fold up opposite sides to meet in centre, let rest for a minute, turn on hot dish and serve.
A French rolled omelette flavoured in the maître d'hôtel manner — parsley, lemon, seasoning — with the flavourings beaten into the eggs rather than added as a compound butter. The whole thing takes under five minutes, so have the dish warming before the butter goes in.
- The hinge: keep the eggs moving, then stopThe two minutes of "sharply mix with fork" are what build the fine curd; the half-minute rest sets a skin on the base so the omelette can be folded without tearing. If you stir past the point where the eggs stop flowing, you get scrambled eggs in a fold.
- Half a gill of creamA gill is half a cup, so this is 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) of cream for eight eggs. That is a generous amount and gives a soft, loose interior; 2 tablespoons is closer to modern practice if you want more structure.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three of them is 3/4 teaspoon of pepper — assertive by current taste. Half that is plenty unless you are using coarsely cracked black pepper.
- A black frying panAn old carbon-steel or well-seasoned cast-iron omelette pan, blackened by use. Any well-seasoned carbon steel or a good nonstick pan of 10 to 12 inches does the job; eight eggs will be too deep in anything smaller.
- Butter and heatAn ounce is 2 tablespoons. Heat it over medium-high until it foams and the foam begins to subside, but before it browns — if it colours, the omelette will taste nutty rather than clean.
- Chives and the lemonHalf a teaspoon each of parsley and chives is a whisper for eight eggs; a tablespoon of each is nearer what a modern palate expects. The recipe has you beat the lemon juice straight into the eggs, so mix and cook in one movement rather than letting the bowl stand.
- Folding, not rollingFolding opposite sides to meet in the centre gives the French three-fold shape rather than the cigar roll. Turn it onto the hot dish seam-side down.
- YieldEight eggs serves three to four as a main course. If you are cooking for one or two, halve everything and use a 8-inch pan rather than crowding a large one with a thin layer.
Maître d'hôtel — literally the master of the house, the steward — came to serve in French kitchens as shorthand for a simple finish of butter, chopped parsley, lemon juice and seasoning. Applied to grilled steaks and fish it appears as beurre maître d'hôtel, a compound butter melted over the top; here the same flavourings are beaten into the raw eggs instead, which is why the recipe reads as a plain omelette with a name attached. Books like this one, compiled in an era when hotel and restaurant cooking in America leaned heavily on French vocabulary, carried long runs of such omelettes under professional names. The instruction to use a "black frying pan" is usually read as calling for a well-seasoned iron or steel pan darkened by use.