Kidney Omelet
4 kidneys 6 tablespoonfuls Crisco 6 eggs Salt and pepper to taste 1 tablespoonful chopped parsley 2 tablespoonfuls cream Melt 2 tablespoonfuls Crisco in frying pan. Skin kidneys and cut into small dice and toss them into hot Crisco three minutes. Whisk whites of eggs to stiff froth, then add yolks, seasonings, parsley, and cream, then add kidney. Make remaining Crisco hot in omelet pan or frying pan, pour in omelet and fry over clear fire six minutes. When the edges are set, fold edges over so that omelet assumes an oval shape; be careful that it is not done too much; to brown the top, hold pan before fire, or put it in oven; never turn an omelet in the pan. Slip it carefully on a hot dish and serve the instant it comes from the fire.
A soufflé-style omelet from the 1913 Crisco promotional cookbook, built on kidneys that are barely cooked before they go into the eggs. The whole thing lives or dies on restraint at the stove.
- Which kidneysThe recipe does not specify, but four kidneys most likely means lamb (sheep's) kidneys, the usual breakfast kidney of the period, on the order of 2 oz each. Veal or beef kidney would be far more meat and far stronger in flavor for six eggs; if only beef kidney is available, use about half a pound and expect a coarser dish.
- Trim before dicing"Skin kidneys" means peeling off the thin membrane. Also cut out the pale fatty core with the tubes running through it, which the book takes for granted and which stays tough and bitter no matter how it is cooked.
- Three minutes is deliberateThe kidney is seared, not cooked through, because it finishes inside the omelet. Kidney that is held over heat past the point of firmness turns rubbery and develops an ammoniac edge, so keep the pan hot and the time short.
- Crisco and quantityCrisco is hydrogenated vegetable shortening and still sold; butter or a neutral oil behaves the same way here. Six tablespoonfuls total is generous by modern habit, and the four tablespoons for the omelet pan can be halved in a nonstick pan without changing the result.
- This is a whisked omeletBeating the whites to a stiff froth and folding in yolks makes a puffed omelet rather than a rolled French one. Fold gently, and get it into the pan at once; the foam starts collapsing as soon as the heavy kidney goes in.
- "Clear fire" and six minutesA clear fire is a coal or wood fire burned down past the smoke to steady radiant heat, which on a modern range is medium, not high. Six minutes over medium is about right for a set base and a still-soft middle.
- Browning the topHolding the pan before the fire is the period's broiler. A minute or less under a modern broiler, or a short spell in a hot oven, does the same job; watch it, since the egg foam colors quickly.
- YieldSix eggs and four kidneys serve three, or four as part of a larger breakfast. Serve immediately, as the recipe insists; a puffed omelet sinks within a minute or two of leaving the heat.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written by Marion Harris Neil to teach American cooks what to do with Procter & Gamble's new hydrogenated cottonseed shortening, introduced in 1911 as a substitute for both butter and lard. That commercial purpose shows in every recipe: Crisco does the work here at both stages, where an English cookbook of the same decade would likely have said butter and dripping. The dish itself is older than the fat. Devilled and sautéed kidneys were a fixture of the Victorian and Edwardian breakfast sideboard, and an omelet was one way a small quantity of offal could be spread across several plates. Crisco was also marketed to Jewish households as a pareve fat carrying no dairy and no pork, though that campaign is best documented in P&G's later Jewish-market cookery publications rather than in this volume.