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Lamb Omelet
(Agnello in frittata) Cut in little pieces a loin of lamb, which is the part that lends itself best for this dish, and fry in lard: a little quantity of lard is sufficient, because the meat of the loins is rather fat. When half cooked season with salt and pepper and when fully cooked pour over four or five whole eggs slightly beaten also seasoned moderately with salt and pepper. Mix, taking care that the eggs do not harden. 34
A very short recipe that assumes a cook already knows what a frittata should look like. The whole dish turns on the last line: the eggs are a binder for the lamb, not a set omelet.
- Do not let the eggs set hard"Mix, taking care that the eggs do not harden" is the hinge. Pull the pan off the heat while the eggs are still creamy and barely coating the meat; residual heat in the pan and the lamb will finish them. Cooked to a firm cake, the dish turns dry and squeaky.
- What cut to buyA loin of lamb here means the saddle or loin chops with their fat. Boned loin chops or a piece of boneless loin, cut into pieces roughly half an inch, works; shoulder is fattier and tougher but acceptable if you cook it longer before the eggs go in.
- The lardLard was a common Italian cooking fat in the regions where olive oil was not the everyday choice, though butter was also usual in the north. The recipe asks only for "a little quantity," since the loin fat renders; a tablespoon is plenty. Olive oil or butter substitutes without complaint, though butter will brown faster.
- Pan and heatUse an 8- to 9-inch skillet for four or five eggs. Brown the lamb over medium-high, then drop the heat before the eggs go in — hot enough to scramble, not hot enough to brown the egg.
- TimingSmall pieces of loin need about five to seven minutes total. "Half cooked" is the point at which they have colored on the outside; salt and pepper there so the seasoning penetrates rather than sitting on the surface.
- YieldFour or five eggs and a loin's worth of meat feed two generously or three as part of a larger meal. Serve straight from the pan, with bread.
- The number 34The trailing figure is a numeral carried over from the original printed page, not part of the method.
Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) was aimed at American households and reflects the Italian domestic tradition codified by Pellegrino Artusi, whose La scienza in cucina had by then gone through many editions. Frittata in that tradition covers a broad family of egg dishes in which the eggs bind whatever is already in the pan — vegetables, cheese, cured pork, leftover meat — rather than the folded French omelet the English title suggests. Lamb loin is an expensive thing to treat this way, and the recipe reads as a spring dish: lamb was seasonal and strongly associated with Easter across the Italian peninsula, and eggs were the other Easter staple. Cooking the two together in one pan is the kind of frugal-luxurious combination that shows up repeatedly in Italian home cookery, where a small quantity of good meat is stretched by something cheap and abundant.