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Omelette with Shrimps (Carefully crack eight fresh)
Carefully crack eight fresh eggs in a bowl, add a half gill cream, half teaspoon salt and three saltspoons pepper. Sharply beat with a fork for two minutes. Cut twelve cooked shrimps into quarter-inch pieces, place in a frying pan with tablespoon melted butter and fry for three minutes. Drop in the eggs, mix with fork for two minutes, let rest for half minute; fold up the opposite sides to meet in centre, let rest for a minute, turn on a hot dish, pour a cream sauce around and serve.
A large French-style rolled omelette, sized for a family rather than a single plate. The measurements are period shorthand and one or two of the timings will overcook the shrimp if followed literally.
- Half a gill of creamA gill is half a cup, so this is 1/4 cup (2 fl oz) of cream for eight eggs. That is a generous amount; it gives a soft, custardy set rather than a firm one.
- Three saltspoons of pepperA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, making 3/4 teaspoon of ground pepper. That is aggressive by current taste for eight eggs; a quarter teaspoon is closer to modern proportions, and white pepper keeps the omelette from looking speckled.
- The shrimp are already cookedThree minutes in the pan will make cooked shrimp squeaky. Warm them in the butter for under a minute, just until the butter foams and they smell sweet, then add the eggs.
- Pan sizeEight eggs need a 10- to 12-inch nonstick or well-seasoned skillet. In anything smaller the omelette is too thick to fold and the centre stays raw while the base browns.
- Heat and the fork workMedium heat, not high. The two minutes of stirring with a fork is the classic method: drag the setting curds inward and let the liquid run underneath, then stop stirring and let the base set flat before folding.
- Fold and turn out"Turn on a hot dish" most likely means inverting the pan over a warmed platter so the omelette lands seam-side down. A cold plate pulls the heat out of a soft omelette quickly.
- The cream sauceLeft unspecified here; a plain cream sauce, loosened if you like with a little of the shrimp butter, would suit. The recipe says to pour it around the omelette rather than over it.
- YieldServes three to four as a lunch or supper dish.
The International Cook Book belongs to the era when American hotel and restaurant cooking was still taught as a branch of the French repertoire, and this is a textbook omelette aux crevettes: eggs beaten only briefly, cooked fast in butter, folded so that opposite sides meet in the centre, and finished with a napped or surrounding sauce. The instruction is to beat "sharply with a fork for two minutes" rather than whisking to a froth. Shrimp were a natural partner, the cream sauce doing the work of tying the filling to the eggs.