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Rum Omelette
(Paris.) Beat 2 eggs with 2 ounces of sugar and a glass of rum. Pour this into a buttered pan with 2 ounces melted butter, cook until set, roll it on a dish, pour a glass of rum over it, light it, send to the table on fire.
A two-egg sweet omelette of the Parisian café type, finished in flame at the table. The quantities are terse and the vessel unspecified, so read the notes before the pan goes on.
- What a "glass" meansIn a book of this date a glass of spirits in a sweet dish is likely a small liqueur or wine glass rather than a tumbler; the term was never standardised and is usually reckoned at somewhere between 2 and 4 fluid ounces. Two are called for, one in the batter and one for flaming; the amount is genuinely imprecise, and more than about 2 oz for the flame gives a long, hard-to-control burn.
- YieldTwo eggs makes one generous omelette, or a modest dessert portion for two. Doubling is better done as two separate omelettes than one large one, which will not roll cleanly.
- Sugar and butterTwo ounces of sugar is roughly a quarter cup, if anything a touch over, which is a lot against two eggs and will make the surface caramelize fast. Two ounces of melted butter is four tablespoons in a pan already buttered; a tablespoon in the pan and a little in the eggs is closer to how a French sweet omelette is handled now.
- The hinge: cook it softAn omelette that is cooked "until set" all the way through will be dry and will crack when rolled. Take it off while the top is still glossy and barely liquid; residual heat and the flaming finish do the rest.
- PanAn 8-inch nonstick or well-seasoned steel skillet over medium heat. Sugared egg sticks and scorches readily, so keep the heat below the point where the butter browns.
- Flaming safelyWarm the rum first in a small pan or ladle, off the flame, then pour and light; cold spirit often will not catch and tempts a second pour onto a hot dish. Never pour from the bottle at the table, use a metal or ovenproof serving dish, and keep the flame clear of hair, sleeves and low-hanging lamps. Most of the alcohol does not burn off, so the finished dish is not for children.
- ServingSend it out at once. A dusting of sugar over the rolled omelette before lighting gives a better caramel and a more visible flame.
With a Saucepan Over the Sea belongs to a genre popular around the turn of the twentieth century: recipes gathered on European travel and set down for American home cooks, each tagged with the city it came from. The Paris label here is doing real work, since the sweet omelette, folded or rolled and doused in spirit, was a standard cafe and restaurant dessert in France, a quick showpiece requiring nothing but eggs, sugar, butter and a bottle. Rum rather than brandy is unremarkable in a Parisian context, where imported rum was a familiar pastry flavouring for babas, savarins and creams. Flaming at the table is generally traced to restaurant service, where the point was as much theatre as flavour, and it was exactly the sort of trick a returning traveller would want to reproduce for guests at home.