Omelette.
Six eggs.
Four teaspoonfuls of cream.
Half a teaspoonful salt.
A little pepper.
Two tablespoonfuls of butter.
Whip whites and yolks together for four minutes in a bowl with the “Dover” egg beater. They should be thick and smooth before you beat in cream, salt and pepper. Melt the butter in a clean frying-pan, set on one side of the stove where it will keep warm but not scorch. Pour the beaten mixture into it and remove to a place where the fire is hotter. As it “sets,” slip a broad knife carefully around the edges and under it, that the butter may find its way freely to all parts of the pan.
When the middle is just set, pass a cake-turner carefully under one half of the omelette and fold it over the other. Lay a hot platter upside down above the doubled mass and holding frying-pan and dish firmly, turn the latter quickly over, reversing the positions of the two, and depositing the omelette in the dish.
Do not be mortified should you break your trial omelette. Join the bits neatly; lay sprays of parsley over the cracks and try another soon. Be sure it is loosened from the pan before you try to turn it out; hold pan and dish fast in place; do not be nervous or flurried, and you will soon catch the knack of dishing the omelette dexterously and handsomely.
I have given you ten receipts for cooking eggs. It would be easy to furnish as many more without exhausting the list of ways of preparing this invaluable article of food for our tables. I have selected the methods that are at once easy and excellent, and adapted to the ability of a class of beginners.
6
BROILED MEATS.
IT has been said that the frying-pan has ruined more American digestions than all the other hurtful agencies combined. It is certainly true that while the process of frying properly performed upon certain substances does not of necessity, make them unwholesome—the useful utensil does play altogether too important a part in our National cookery. Broiled meats are more wholesome, more palatable, and far more elegant. Certain things should never be fried. That beefsteak should never make the acquaintance of the frying-pan is a rule without an exception.
The best gridirons for private families are the light, double “broilers,” made of tinned wire and linked together at the back with loops of the same material. They are easily handled, turned and cleansed, and when not in use may be hung on the wall out of the way. It is well to have two sizes, one for large steaks, the smaller for birds, oysters, and when there is occasion to broil a single chop or chicken-leg for an invalid.