Baked Omelet
1 tablespoonful melted Crisco 4 eggs 8 tablespoonfuls milk ½ teaspoonful cornstarch 2 tablespoonfuls water Salt and pepper to taste Beat eggs well, add milk and beat again, add Crisco, seasonings, and cornstarch mixed with water. Turn into a Criscoed fireproof dish and bake in moderate oven fifteen minutes. Serve hot.
A plain baked egg custard in all but name, and one of the simplest entries in the book. The only real variables are the fat, the dish and how far you take the eggs.
- Crisco and its substitutesCrisco here is hydrogenated cottonseed oil, the product the book exists to sell. A tablespoon of melted butter or a neutral oil does the same job; "a Criscoed dish" simply means well greased.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350F; period sources put "moderate" somewhere in the 325-375F range. The book was written for coal and early gas ranges where "moderate" was judged by hand or by a scrap of paper browning.
- Eight tablespoonfuls of milkThat is half a cup. The ratio of four eggs to half a cup of milk gives a firm, sliceable set rather than a loose custard.
- The cornstarch slurrySlaked in two tablespoons of water so it does not lump, the starch keeps the egg proteins from tightening and weeping. Whisk it in last and pour promptly.
- Fireproof dishAn ovenproof baking dish or pie plate. Depth governs the timing: the shallower the dish, the closer fifteen minutes will come to setting the centre.
- Judging donenessFifteen minutes suits a shallow dish. Pull it when the centre is just set and barely trembles — residual heat carries it further, and an overbaked egg mixture turns spongy and weeps water onto the plate.
- YieldFour eggs serves two generously or three at a breakfast table with toast. It does not hold; serve straight from the dish.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble, two years after the company introduced Crisco as the first widely marketed hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Its recipes are conventional American home cooking of the period with one editorial rule: wherever butter or lard would have appeared, Crisco appears instead. A baked omelet like this one needed no persuading — it is essentially an unstirred egg custard, a kind of dish with a long prior history in English and American cookbooks — but the tablespoon of shortening beaten into the eggs and the greased dish let the book make its argument twice on a single page. The cornstarch is a period touch, and one might guess it served as cheap insurance against curdling in ovens that could not be trusted to hold a steady heat.