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Cheese Omelets
Beat the yolks of six eggs light. Stir into them a half cupful of milk, one cupful of grated cheese, a half teaspoonful of salt and white pepper to taste. Grease well custard cups or a dish from which it can be served; half fill them with the mixture; set in a pan of hot water and bake covered until firm. Serve at once. They are very good with a white sauce, but good without.
Despite the name, this is a baked cheese custard rather than a folded omelet — the whites are left out entirely, and the yolks set slowly in a water bath. The book gives no oven temperature and no time, so both need supplying.
- Oven and timingA custard like this wants a moderate oven, 325-350F. In half-filled custard cups set in hot water, expect 25-35 minutes; a larger single dish will take 45 minutes or more.
- Doneness"Until firm" means the centre barely trembles when the cup is nudged. Egg-yolk custards curdle and weep if pushed further, and the cheese fat separates out as a greasy film.
- The water bath is the hingeThe pan of hot water should come halfway up the cups and stay below a simmer. Direct oven heat on a yolk-and-cheese mixture at this ratio is likely to curdle it.
- CoveredCover the cups individually with buttered rounds of parchment or foil, not the whole pan tightly, so steam does not condense and drip back in pools.
- The cheeseA period cookbook saying "grated cheese" without qualification most likely intended a firm aged Cheddar or a dry American factory cheese. Use something similar and grate it fine; pre-shredded cheese carries anti-caking agents that can go gritty in custard.
- Six yolksThat leaves six whites. They keep several days covered in the refrigerator and freeze well.
- White sauceThe suggested sauce is a plain white sauce -- roughly a tablespoon each of butter and flour to a cup of milk, seasoned with salt and white pepper.
- YieldSix yolks and a cup of cheese fill four to six standard custard cups, enough for four at a light supper or luncheon.
Late nineteenth and early twentieth century American cookbooks used "omelet" loosely, covering anything egg-based and soft — baked omelets, puffy oven omelets and dishes like this one, which is really a savoury custard in the French style. Cheese chapters were a fixture in books of this era, and the water-bath custard was the standard gentle technique for setting eggs without toughening them.