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Omelette with Chicken Livers
Remove the galls from six fine chicken livers; soak them in cold water for thirty minutes; lift out and neatly wipe dry. Cut each one into four equal parts.
Heat in a frying pan one tablespoon melted butter or fat; drop in the livers; season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Toss them well on the fire for half a minute, and then gently fry for eight minutes, tossing frequently meanwhile. Drain well and replace in the same saucepan, adding one tablespoon good sherry wine, one and a half tablespoons tomato sauce one tablespoon demi-glace one saltspoon cayenne pepper and a saltspoon salt. Then briskly cook for three and a half minutes, tossing gently, and keep in a hot place till required.
Prepare an omelette and just before folding it up place half the chicken livers in the centre of the omelette, fold up, turn it on a hot dish, neatly arrange the other half of the livers, etc. around the base of the omelette and serve.
A filled omelette from the era when a stocked kitchen always had brown sauce on hand. The main adjustments are the salt, the cooking time for the livers, and the omelette itself, which the original assumes you already know how to make.
- Removing the gallsThe gall bladder is the small green-tinged sac attached to the liver; any part stained green by it is bitter and should be cut away. Livers sold trimmed in supermarkets rarely have it, so check and move on.
- Saltspoon and salt totalsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Even so, a full teaspoon of salt plus a further saltspoon for six chicken livers is heavy by modern palates; start with half and correct at the end, especially if your demi-glace is reduced and already salty.
- Cut the frying timeEight minutes of frying followed by three and a half in sauce leaves chicken livers grey and chalky. Two to three minutes in hot fat, turning, gets them browned outside and faintly pink at the centre; then a minute or two in the sauce is enough to glaze them.
- Demi-glaceA reduced brown sauce built on veal stock, standard in professional kitchens of the period and still sold in tubs and concentrates. A tablespoon of well-reduced beef or veal stock, or a good commercial demi-glace, does the job; do not substitute gravy browning.
- Tomato sauceThis means a cooked savoury tomato sauce, not ketchup and not raw passata. Plain tinned tomato sauce or a spoonful of a thick tomato coulis is the closest match.
- "Frying pan" then "saucepan"The recipe switches words but means the same vessel throughout. Keep the livers in the pan they browned in so the fond goes into the sauce.
- The omeletteNone is specified because the French rolled omelette was assumed knowledge in books of this kind: eggs beaten with a pinch of salt, cooked fast in butter in a small pan, still soft in the middle when it is filled and folded.
- YieldSix livers and the sauce fill a two- or three-egg omelette generously; as written this serves one or two as a light main course or supper dish.
This is standard early twentieth-century hotel cooking, of the kind Filippini and his contemporaries set down for American households: a plain rolled omelette used as a vehicle for a small quantity of richly sauced garnish. The pattern is French, and the sherry, tomato and demi-glace combination sits close to the mad he classic repertoire, scaled down to a single portion. Chicken livers were cheap and quick, and the omelette turned a few ounces of offcuts into a dish a kitchen could send out with confidence. The instruction to soak the livers in cold water reflects the older idea that soaking drew out blood and bitterness; today it is normally skipped, and only the careful removal of the gall really matters.