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Ham or Chicken Omelet
1 cup minced ham or chicken 1 1/2 tablespoon Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 5 eggs 1/4 cup cold water 1 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper 1/2 tablespoons Mazola Beat the eggs without separating until very light. Add the water and seasonings and stir in the meat mixed with the cornstarch. Heat the Mazola in a medium-sized frying-pan, pour in frying pan, pour in the meat mixture and cook gently, lifting about the edges until brown on the bottom. Put in the oven for a moment to "set" the top. Cut at right angles to the handle to form a hinge, fold over, slide onto a platter and serve garnished with parsley. .
A straightforward folded omelet stretched with cooked meat, written for a promotional booklet and thus naming its brands. Nothing here is obsolete, but a few details need translating.
- The brands are just pantry staplesArgo and Kingsford's are cornstarch; Mazola is corn oil. Any cornstarch works, and any neutral oil or butter will do for the pan.
- What the cornstarch is doingHalf a tablespoon tossed with the minced meat absorbs juices and keeps the omelet from weeping as it sets. Toss it dry with the ham or chicken before the meat goes into the eggs, or it will lump.
- The fat measureThe printed page was checked and the fat quantity is as our text now gives it. Half a tablespoon is thin coverage for a medium pan, so use enough to film the base well.
- Oven finishThe recipe gives no temperature, only "put in the oven for a moment" to set the top. A brief spell in a moderate oven, or a few seconds under a broiler, does the job; the point is to set the surface without drying the interior.
- Cook gently means gentlyThe instruction to lift the edges and let uncooked egg run under is the whole technique. Over high heat the bottom browns before the center has any body, and the fold cracks.
- The hinge cutCutting at right angles to the handle means a shallow slash across the omelet, partway through only, so the far half folds over cleanly instead of tearing.
- SaltA teaspoon of salt for five eggs is on the high side once cured ham is in the mix. Season lightly and taste, especially with commercial ham.
- YieldFive eggs and a cup of meat serves three, or two generously. It does not scale up in one pan; make two omelets rather than a larger one.
This comes from one of the recipe booklets issued by the makers of Argo and Kingsford's cornstarch and Mazola oil, all products of the same corn-refining industry that grew up around American maize in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Such booklets were given away free or sold for a few cents, and the recipes in them tend to name the brand; the cornstarch in the meat mixture is as much advertising as technique, though it does genuine work here. The dish is often associated with the supper table rather than breakfast, in households said to have eaten their main dinner at midday and a lighter egg course, sometimes made with leftover roast meat, in the evening. Folding an omelet over a hinge cut, then sliding rather than turning it onto the platter, is a technique American cookbook writers of the period used freely.