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Omelette with Truffles
Carefully crack eight fresh eggs in a bowl, add half gill cream, season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper; add one exceedingly fine-chopped truffle. Beat up with a fork for two minutes. Thoroughly heat a tablespoon melted butter in a frying pan, drop in the eggs. Stir with a fork for two minutes, let rest for half minute, fold up the two opposite ends to meet in the centre, let rest for one minute, then turn out on a hot dish and serve.
A French rolled omelette scaled for a family or a small dinner party, written when truffles were an ordinary luxury in hotel kitchens rather than a splurge. The measurements need translating and the butter needs increasing.
- Half a gill of creamA gill is 4 fl oz in American measure (5 fl oz imperial), so half a gill is roughly 4 tablespoons, about a quarter cup, for eight eggs. That is a generous amount; it gives a soft, almost custardy set and makes the omelette harder to keep from weeping.
- Two saltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so this is half a teaspoon of white pepper. That is assertive by current taste; a quarter teaspoon suits most palates, and white pepper from an old jar tastes of dust rather than heat.
- One tablespoon of butter is not enoughFor eight eggs in a pan wide enough to hold them you want at least two tablespoons, and the pan should be well coated up the sides. "Thoroughly heat" means the butter foams and quiets but does not colour — brown butter will speckle the finished omelette.
- Pan sizeEight eggs need a 10- to 12-inch pan to spread thin enough to cook in the stated time. In a smaller skillet the centre stays liquid while the base sets, and no amount of stirring fixes it. Splitting the mixture into two four-egg omelettes is the easier route.
- The truffleFresh black truffle, chopped as finely as the recipe insists, so it disperses. Truffle perfume is volatile and fat-soluble: adding it raw to the eggs and letting the bowl stand covered for an hour, or overnight in the shell if you have whole eggs, does far more than any amount of cooking. Preserved truffle in a tin is milder; synthetic truffle oil is not a substitute here.
- Heat and timingMedium heat, not high. Two minutes of stirring, half a minute at rest, fold, one minute more — roughly three and a half minutes total, which is right for a soft French omelette. The interior should still be glossy when it leaves the pan; it carries on setting on the hot dish.
- The fold"Fold up the two opposite ends to meet in the centre" is the tri-fold, not the half-moon: bring both sides in over the middle, then invert the pan so the omelette turns out seam-side down and smooth-side up.
- YieldServes three as a main course, four to six as a first course or part of a larger meal.
The plain rolled omelette is the base on which classical French cookery hung dozens of named variations, and omelette aux truffes sat near the top of that list — one of the standard garnitures alongside fines herbes, mushrooms and cheese. Its presence in an international compendium of this period reflects how thoroughly hotel and restaurant kitchens in Britain and America worked from a French repertoire, down to the quick tri-fold onto a heated plate. Truffles were expensive but not exotic — the Périgord black truffle harvest was far larger before the First World War than it is today, and tinned truffle was a normal grocer's item. Storing eggs beside truffles to take up the scent is a long-standing kitchen practice, generally traced to French household cooks rather than to any one chef.