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Omelette Celestine
(French.) (Named after Pope Celestine, founder of a strict order of monks.) Boil 1/2 pint of milk and 2 tablespoonfuls of rice flour, 4 ounces of powdered sugar, and a spoonful of vanilla. Stir to prevent burning or clotting for 10 minutes, add the yolks of 3 eggs and 1/2 ounce of butter. Stir, take off the fire, and keep hot. Make an omelette of 6 eggs and before folding, fill with this cream. Dust with sugar, brown with a salamander, and serve it with plum or peach marmalade.
Two preparations in one: a rice-flour pastry cream, then a plain rolled omelette folded around it and glazed. The cream must be finished and still warm before the eggs go in the pan.
- The hingeHave the cream made, hot, and sitting in a bowl over warm water before you touch the omelette. A six-egg omelette is done in under two minutes and will overcook while you stir custard.
- Half a pintThe figure is ambiguous: 8 fl oz if American, 10 fl oz if imperial. Either works, since rice flour thickens on the generous side; use the larger amount if you want the cream loose enough to spoon.
- Powdered sugarIn this period that means granulated sugar ground fine, not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Four ounces is 1/2 cup, and the cream will be markedly sweet by current taste; 2-3 ounces is defensible.
- A spoonful of vanillaProbably an extract or essence, in which case a teaspoon is plenty and a tablespoon will taste of alcohol. Half a split vanilla bean steeped in the milk is another option.
- Rice flourIt needs the full 10 minutes of stirring over low heat to lose its raw, chalky taste, and it clots the instant it catches. Whisk it into the cold milk before heating rather than adding it to hot milk.
- Butter and eggsHalf an ounce of butter is 1 tablespoon. Add the yolks off the boil, stirring hard, or they will scramble in the hot starch.
- SalamanderA salamander was an iron plate heated red and held over the surface to caramelize sugar. A broiler set high, with the dish close to the element for a minute or two, or a kitchen torch, does the same work; watch it, since dusted sugar goes from amber to black quickly.
- MarmaladeNineteenth-century plum or peach marmalade is what we would call a thick jam or fruit butter, not the citrus preserve. Warm it slightly and pass it separately.
- YieldSix eggs and a cup of cream serve three, four at a stretch. If you are not confident with a large omelette, make two of three eggs each and split the filling.
The attribution in the headnote is the kind of story cookbooks repeat rather than verify: Pope Celestine V, the hermit who briefly took the papacy in 1294 and resigned it, did give his name to the Celestines, a severe offshoot of the Benedictines, but a sweet omelette stuffed with vanilla cream and glazed with sugar is an unlikely monument to austerity. In professional French cookery C tained shredded pancake is not the point: C tained