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Omelette with Veal Kidneys
Trim off fat and remove skin from a fresh veal kidney, and cut in quarter-inch square pieces. Heat a tablespoon melted butter in a black frying pan, add the kidneys and fry five minutes, tossing well once in a while. Sprinkle over three saltspoons salt and saltspoon pepper, lightly toss and drain them. Carefully crack eight fresh eggs into a bowl, add the kidneys, half a gill milk, half a teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper. Sharply beat with fork two minutes. Heat a tablespoon melted butter in a frying pan, drop in the eggs, mix with fork for two minutes, let rest half a minute, fold opposite sides to meet in center, let rest for a minute, turn on a hot dish and serve.
A French bistro omelette written in the terse professional style of its era, with measurements that no longer appear on kitchen spoons. The whole dish takes about ten minutes once the kidney is trimmed.
- Saltspoons and gillsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons is 3/4 teaspoon and two is 1/2 teaspoon. A gill is half a cup, making "half a gill milk" 1/4 cup.
- Total saltAdded up, the recipe calls for about 1 1/4 teaspoons of salt: 3/4 teaspoon sprinkled over the kidney and 1/2 teaspoon in the egg mixture. Season the kidney lightly and hold back some of the salt in the eggs if you prefer.
- A black frying panCast iron or blackened carbon steel, well seasoned. For the omelette itself a 10- to 12-inch pan is right for eight eggs; anything smaller gives a thick, slow-setting mass.
- Buying and prepping the kidneyVeal kidney is a special-order item at most butchers. Beyond trimming the suet and peeling the membrane, cut out the pale core of gristle and tubes at the center, which stays tough no matter how it is cooked.
- The five-minute fryThis is the hinge. Diced veal kidney wants a hot pan and brief contact: five minutes over good heat, tossed, and no longer. Held past that it turns hard, and overcooked kidney is often blamed for the strong flavor people associate with kidney generally.
- Draining mattersKidney throws off liquid as it cooks. The instruction to drain them is not fussiness: that juice will loosen the eggs and stop the omelette setting cleanly.
- Folding, not rollingFolding "opposite sides to meet in center" gives the flat trifold of a hotel omelette rather than the rolled French cigar. The two brief rests let the interior finish on residual heat, so pull the pan while the surface is still faintly moist.
- YieldEight eggs and a whole kidney serve four as a main course, or six at a breakfast table with other dishes.
Omelette aux rognons was standard bistro and hotel fare in the France of the late nineteenth century, and it travelled to American restaurant kitchens with the French-trained chefs who staffed them. The book is often attributed to Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, though the recipe text carries no byline; veal kidney was quick-cooking and prized for a flavor considered more delicate than beef or pork kidney. The precision of the instructions \a a minute \a is the mark of a professional writing down what he did by reflex, and the saltspoon measures place the book squarely in the era before standardized cup-and-spoon sets took over American recipe writing.