Home › Breakfast › Cheese Omelet
Cheese Omelet
Follow the directions for Plain Omelet, spreading one-half cup of grated American cheese over when it is put in the oven.
A one-line variation that depends entirely on the Plain Omelet it points back to, and on a habit modern cooks have largely abandoned: finishing the omelet in the oven rather than folding it on the burner.
- American cheeseIn a book of this vintage this means plain domestic cheddar, not the processed slices the name now suggests. Use a firm, well-aged cheddar and grate it yourself; pre-shredded cheese carries anti-caking starch that makes it grainy on an omelet.
- How much is half a cupGrated cheddar runs roughly 2 ounces to the half cup, packed a little loosely. That is generous for a two- to three-egg omelet. The recipe itself gives no egg count, so the proportion depends on whatever the Plain Omelet directions call for.
- The oven stepThe directions for the Plain Omelet, not reproduced here, govern the method; omelets of this era were commonly started on the range and moved to the oven to set the top. No temperature or time is given in the original. Use an ovenproof skillet with no plastic handle.
- Add the cheese lateScatter it on as the omelet goes into the oven, exactly as written. Cheese stirred into the raw eggs weeps fat and toughens the curd; on top it melts into a sheet and stays tender.
- Know when to stopPull it while the centre is still faintly moist and glossy. Eggs continue to set from residual heat, and a cheese omelet held until dry in the middle turns rubbery and squeezes out liquid on the plate.
- YieldA three-egg version serves one generously. The original gives no yield; it depends on the Plain Omelet it refers back to.
Late nineteenth and early twentieth century American cookbooks routinely treated the omelet as a partly baked dish rather than a purely stovetop one, and some drew a distinction between the French folded omelet and the puffed or "soufflé" omelet whose whites were beaten separately and whose top was set in the oven. The oven finish is often said to have suited coal and wood ranges, where a steady bottom heat was harder to control than the space above it, though this is more supposition than documented explanation. The cheese called for is a marker of its own moment: "American cheese" was still an honest description of factory cheddar made in the United States, a product that had been shipped in quantity since the mid-1800s, and only later became the name for a processed blend. Slipping a half cup of it over the eggs is a way to turn a plain omelet into something substantial without a second pan.