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Sailors' Omelette
Lightly rub inside of a bowl with a bean garlic, then carefully crack in eight fresh eggs. Add a half teaspoon each anchovy essence and salt, a saltspoon cayenne, half teaspoon chopped parsley, and sharply beat up with a fork for two minutes. Remove skin and bones from a two-ounce piece smoked salmon, cut it in quarter-inch-square pieces, place in frying pan with two tablespoons melted butter and fry for five minutes, tossing well meanwhile. Drop in eggs, mix with fork for two minutes, then let rest for half minute; fold up opposite sides to meet in centre, let rest for a minute, turn on hot dish and serve.
An eight-egg omelette built on anchovy and smoked salmon, from an era when a rolled French omelette was standard breakfast technique. Most of what needs translating here is vocabulary and one timing.
- The hinge: don't fry the salmon for five minutesCold-smoked salmon of the sort sold today is already cured and needs only to warm through in the butter, thirty seconds to a minute, or it turns dry and stringy. The longer frying may have suited a firmer, saltier, more heavily smoked side, but five minutes is too long for a modern one.
- A bean garlicA single clove, halved, rubbed around the inside of the bowl and discarded. This is a scent, not an ingredient, and the whole point is restraint; chopping the clove in changes the dish entirely.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. With cayenne that is a fairly assertive amount for eight eggs, so scale to your own tolerance.
- Anchovy essenceA Victorian bottled condiment, essentially anchovies reduced with vinegar and spice. Anchovy paste from a tube is the closest current equivalent; a scant half teaspoon, or an equal amount of colatura or good fish sauce.
- Hold the saltBetween the anchovy essence, the smoked salmon and the half teaspoon of salt, this seasons hard. Season lightly at the bowl stage and correct at the table rather than after the eggs are set.
- Pan and heatEight eggs need a 10- to 12-inch nonstick or well-seasoned pan over medium heat. Larger than that and the omelette is too thin to fold; smaller and the centre stays raw while the base colours.
- Reading the timingsTwo minutes of stirring, thirty seconds still, fold, one minute more is a workable rhythm on medium heat, but go by the eggs: fold when the top is still glossy and slightly loose, since it will carry on setting in the fold and on the plate.
- YieldEight eggs serves three to four as a main course, or up to six cut in wedges as part of a larger breakfast.
The name belongs to a family of dishes named for sailors — matelote and similar preparations built on preserved fish and store-cupboard seasoning rather than fresh meat. Anchovy essence, smoked salmon and cayenne are all shelf-stable or long-keeping, the sort of larder a ship's cook or a coastal household could rely on, and the garlic rubbed round the bowl and thrown away is a frugality that reads as sophistication now. Bottled anchovy essence was a fixture of British and American kitchens through the nineteenth century and turns up constantly in savouries, sauces and breakfast dishes of the period; the anchovy paste sold in tubes today is its closest descendant.