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French Omelette
Beat the whites of 5 eggs very stiff and set aside in a cool place. Beat the yolks well with salt, pepper, butter the size of a walnut, 2 tablespoonfuls of cream, a little nutmeg, 1/2 spoonful of onion juice, and 1 spoonful of chopped parsley. Add these lightly to the whites and cook in a hot, buttered pan. This makes a very tender, delicate omelette.
Despite the name, this is a separated-egg or puffed omelette rather than the rolled French style — the whites are whipped and folded in, so it behaves more like a savoury soufflé. Everything depends on handling it gently and fast.
- The hinge: fold, don't stirOnce the beaten yolks go into the stiff whites, use a spatula and no more than a dozen strokes, stopping while streaks remain. Any real mixing collapses the foam and you get a flat, slightly rubbery pancake instead of the promised tenderness.
- Butter the size of a walnutRoughly 1 tablespoon; a shelled walnut was one of several common nineteenth-century comparisons for a small knob of butter. Soften it first so it disperses in the yolks rather than sitting in lumps.
- "Spoonful" is ambiguousThe recipe specifies tablespoonfuls for the cream but only "spoonful" for the onion juice and parsley, and period books used the bare word for both teaspoon and tablespoon. A teaspoon of onion juice is about right for five eggs; a tablespoon would dominate.
- Onion juiceGrate half a small onion and press the pulp through a fine sieve, or crush it in a garlic press. The point is flavour without wet pieces of onion, which would weep into the foam.
- Pan heatTake "a hot, buttered pan" as hot enough that the butter foams but does not brown — in practice a 10-inch nonstick or well-seasoned skillet over medium to medium-high heat. Too hot and the base sets and scorches long before the interior sets.
- Finishing, which the original omitsCook undisturbed 3 to 4 minutes until the bottom is set and pale gold, then either slide it under a broiler for a minute or cover the pan off the heat for 2 minutes to set the top. Fold in half and serve at once; it deflates within a few minutes of leaving the pan.
- YieldFive eggs makes one omelette serving two, or three at a light lunch with bread and salad. It does not reheat.
Puffed omelettes made by whipping the whites separately were common in late Victorian and Edwardian cookery on both sides of the Atlantic, and "French" was often attached to egg dishes as a mark of refinement. The classic thin omelette of Escoffier's era is beaten whole and cooked in seconds, though French cookery of the period also had its own separated-egg omelette soufflée, so the label is not simply a misnomer. The addition of cream, nutmeg and onion juice fits the Anglo-American habit of dressing eggs up for a dinner table.