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Omelette, Parisienne
Crack eight fresh eggs in a copper basin, add a half gill cream, half teaspoon salt, three saltspoons pepper and sharply whisk for five minutes. Heat a tablespoon butter in a black frying pan, add three finely sliced, well-cleaned, fresh mushrooms, three finely chopped shallots, one ounce ham cut in small square pieces, and gently brown for five minutes, lightly tossing once in a while. Drop in eggs, briskly stir with a fork for two minutes and let rest for a half minute; fold up opposite sides to meet in centre, let rest for a minute, turn on a hot dish and serve.
A standard French rolled omelette with a mushroom, shallot and ham garnish cooked in the pan first. The instructions are terse but complete; the only real pitfalls are the archaic measures and one timing that would ruin the texture.
- Half a gill of creamA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 1/4 cup (2 fl oz). That is generous for eight eggs and will make a soft, loose omelette; 2 tablespoons gives a firmer fold.
- Three saltspoons of pepperA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, making 3/4 teaspoon of pepper. That is assertive by modern taste, and if you are using pre-ground black pepper rather than freshly cracked, half that is plenty.
- Whisk for five minutesIgnore this. Five minutes of sharp whisking aerates the eggs into foam that collapses in the pan and turns dry. Thirty seconds, just until the yolks and whites are uniform and no ropes of white remain, is what you want.
- Copper basin, black frying panThe copper bowl is a whisking tradition, not a requirement here. The "black frying pan" is most likely a blued carbon steel or well-blackened iron pan of the kind used for omelettes; a well-seasoned carbon steel or a nonstick skillet of 10 to 12 inches does the same job. Eight eggs need the full 12 inches if you want to fold rather than scramble.
- More butter than statedA single tablespoon browns the garnish but leaves nothing to keep eight eggs from gripping the pan. Use the tablespoon for the mushrooms, shallots and ham, then add another tablespoon and let it foam before the eggs go in.
- Heat and the resting periodsMedium-high for the two minutes of stirring, then the pan comes off or down to low for the half-minute rest so the base sets without colouring. Omelettes of this French type are generally served pale rather than browned; note the recipe browns only the garnish.
- Fold and turn out"Turn on a hot dish" means invert the pan over the plate so the seam ends underneath. Warm the plate first; a cold plate pulls the heat out of a soft omelette immediately.
- YieldEight eggs serves four generously, or two if this is the whole of a light supper. If you are cooking for more, make two omelettes rather than one large one.
The name marks a garnished version rather than a plain omelette: eggs alone are an omelette, eggs with mushrooms, shallots and a little ham are parisienne, dressed up with the garnish of a restaurant kitchen -- though the city-versus-country reading of the name is traditional rather than documented. The recipe reads like a professional's notes, and the equipment is suggestive: the copper basin and the "black frying pan" belong to the vocabulary of French-trained restaurant kitchens, which American cookbooks were borrowing heavily in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The saltspoon, a genuine piece of Victorian and Edwardian tableware pressed into service as a measure, points to the same period. Note also that the garnish is cooked in the pan and the eggs poured over it, rather than folded into a plain omelette at the end.