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Crumb Omelette
(A German recipe.) Beat the whites and yolks of 6 eggs separately, adding to the yolks 1 cup of cream blended with a tablespoonful of cornstarch and a cup of bread-crumbs. Stir, season with salt, pepper, and parsley and a little chopped onion, pour into a buttered pan and cook until it is brown before folding. Can be served with a puree of spinach or any vegetable made into a cream, or it can be made as an ordinary omelette, the bread being cut into dice and fried before adding, in the centre.
A bread-and-cream omelette closer to a savoury soufflé than to a French folded omelette. The instructions assume you know to fold the beaten whites in at the end, which the text never quite says.
- The hinge: whites go in lastBeat the yolk-cream-crumb mixture fully, season it, then fold the stiff whites in with a spatula just before it hits the pan. If the whites are stirred in with everything else, the batter deflates and you get a dense pancake.
- Bread-crumbs means stale breadHousehold crumbs of this period were generally grated from stale bread rather than bought ready-made. Use soft crumbs from crustless white bread, torn or pulsed; dry commercial crumbs will drink the cream and turn the omelette pasty. Let the crumbs soak in the cream a few minutes before adding the yolks.
- Cornstarch needs cold liquidBlend the tablespoon of cornstarch into the cold cream until smooth before it meets anything warm, or it will lump. Its job is to bind, not thicken; the omelette should not taste starchy.
- Pan and heatA 9- or 10-inch heavy skillet, well buttered, over medium-low. Six eggs plus a cup of cream in a smaller pan will brown outside before the middle sets. Cover for the last few minutes, or slide the pan under a broiler, rather than pushing the heat up.
- "Cook until it is brown before folding"This means the underside sets to a deep gold and the top is just barely firm. A crumb omelette this thick often will not fold cleanly; cutting it in wedges from the pan is the honest solution and does not hurt it.
- The alternative versionThe last sentence describes a different dish: an ordinary folded omelette with the bread cut into dice and fried, laid down the centre before folding. Choose one route or the other rather than combining them.
- YieldSix eggs and a cup of cream serve three or four as a main course, more as part of a larger meal. Cream can be halved with whole milk without harm, though the texture is lighter.
- The spinach purée"A puree of spinach or any vegetable made into a cream" means the vegetable cooked, sieved, and loosened with cream or a thin white sauce to a spoonable consistency. Season it well; the omelette itself is mild.
Bread-thickened egg dishes were a fixture of German home cooking, where stale bread was worked back into the meal rather than thrown out, and this one sits in a long family that includes bread dumplings and the various Aufläufe that turn crumbs, dairy and eggs into a substantial dish for very little money. Its appearance in an English-language collection reflects a wider vogue for gathering recipes from abroad and presenting them to American and British households under national labels — a genre in which "a German recipe" served as both provenance and selling point. The instruction to fold the eggs and serve them with a creamed vegetable also fits the habit of building meatless main courses around eggs and dairy, useful on fast days and in kitchens where meat was the expensive part of the week.