FRICASSEED EGGS.
Take a dozen eggs, and boil them six or seven minutes, or till they are just hard enough to peel and slice without breaking. Then put them into a pan of cold water while you prepare some grated bread-crumbs, (seasoned with pepper, salt and nutmeg,) and beat the yolks of two or three raw eggs very light. Take the boiled eggs out of the water, and having peeled off the shells, slice the eggs, dust a little flour over them, and dip them first into the beaten egg, and then into the bread-crumbs so as to cover them well on both sides. Have ready in a frying-pan some boiling lard; put the sliced eggs into it, and fry them on both sides. Serve them up at the breakfast table, garnished with small sprigs of parsley that has been fried in the same lard after the eggs were taken out.
PLAIN OMELET.
Take six eggs, leaving out the whites of two. Beat them very light, and strain them through a sieve. Add pepper and salt to your taste. Divide two ounces of fresh butter into little bits, and put it into the egg. Have ready a quarter of a pound of butter in a frying-pan, or a flat stew-pan. Place it on hot coals, and have the butter boiling when you put in the beaten egg. Fry it gently till of a light brown on the under side. Do not turn it while cooking as it will do better without. You may brown the top by holding a hot shovel over it. When done, lay it in the dish, double it in half, and stick sprigs of curled parsley over it.
You may flavour the omelet by mixing with the beaten egg some parsley or sweet herbs minced fine, some chopped celery, or chopped onion, allowing two moderate sized onions to an omelet of six eggs. Or what is still better, it may be seasoned with veal kidney or sweet-bread minced; with cold ham shred as fine as possible; or with minced oysters, (the hard part omitted,) with tops of asparagus (that has been previously boiled) cut into small pieces.
You should have one of the pans that are made purposely for omelets.
AN OMELETTE SOUFFLÉ.
Break eight eggs, separate the whites from the yolks, and strain them. Put the whites into one pan, and the yolks into another, and beat them separately with rods till the yolks are very thick and smooth, and the whites a stiff froth that will stand alone. Then add gradually to the yolks, three quarters of a pound of the finest powdered loaf-sugar, and orange-flower water or lemon-juice to your taste. Next stir the whites lightly into the yolks. Butter a deep pan or dish (that has been previously heated) and pour the mixture rapidly into it. Set it in a Dutch oven with coals under it, and on the top, and bake it five minutes. If properly beaten and mixed, and carefully baked, it will rise very high. Send it immediately to table, or it will fall and flatten.
Do not begin to make an omelette soufflé till the company at table have commenced their dinner, that it may be ready to serve up just in time, immediately on the removal of the meats. The whole must be accomplished as quickly as possible. Send it round with a spoon.
If you live in a large town, the safest way of avoiding a failure in an omelette soufflé is to hire a French cook to come to your kitchen with his own utensils and ingredients, and make and bake it himself, while the first part of the dinner is progressing in the dining-room.