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Baked Omelet Souffle
4 eggs 3 tablespoons hot water 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper 1/2 tablespoon Argo or Kings. ford's Cornstarch 1 tablespoon Mazola Heat the Mazola in a quart-sized baking dish, rubbing the sides with the hot oil. Separate the eggs, beat the whites stiff and the yolks till creamy. Add the cornstarch, water and seasonings, fold in the whites, transfer to the heated baking dish and bake twelve to fifteen minutes in a hot oven, 375 degrees F.
A straightforward soufflé omelet from a corn-products promotional cookbook; the only real technical demands are the fold and getting it to the table fast.
- The hinge: fold, don't stirThe yolk mixture is thin and will deflate stiff whites quickly. Lighten the yolks with a spoonful of white first, then fold the rest in three additions, stopping while a few streaks remain.
- Brand namesArgo and Kingsford's are both cornstarch — this book was published to sell them, along with Mazola. Any cornstarch works, and Mazola is simply corn oil; a neutral oil or clarified butter substitutes directly.
- Why cornstarch at allHalf a tablespoon in four eggs is a small amount, intended to give the foam a little support and a slightly softer set. It is too little to taste, and the dish will work without it.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe calls its own 375F a "hot oven," though in period usage that term was often glossed at 400F or above. Take the number, not the adjective: 375F suits this, and hotter risks browning the top before the centre sets.
- Heating the dishHeating the oil in the quart dish and rubbing it round the sides matters, so the batter meets a hot, greased surface. Have the eggs beaten before you heat the dish so nothing waits.
- DonenessTwelve to fifteen minutes gives a puffed top and a centre that is just barely moist. It should still tremble slightly; another two minutes turns it dry and eggy.
- Yield and servingFour eggs serves two at breakfast. Serve it out of the baking dish immediately, as it begins to sink within a minute or two of leaving the oven.
Cookbooks issued by food manufacturers circulated widely among American home cooks in the early twentieth century, and this one exists to put Argo cornstarch and Mazola oil into as many dishes as possible, including one that has no traditional need for either. Corn oil was a comparatively new product at the time, a byproduct of the same wet-milling process that yielded cornstarch and corn syrup, and pamphlets like this worked hard to persuade cooks that it could stand in for butter and lard. The dish itself is the standard omelette soufflée of French practice, in which the whites are beaten separately and the whole thing baked rather than folded in a pan; it appeared in American household manuals through the late nineteenth century, often under the name "puffy omelet." The cornstarch is the manufacturer's contribution, not the tradition's.