When Did Omelets Become Fairly Common in American Home Cooking?

[opinionatedchef]

http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodeggs....

I recently saw a 1957 Gregory peck/Lauren Bacall comedy called Desiging Woman, in which she cooks him an omelet (caveat- in the film,as in real life, she came from class and wealth; and the film took place in NYC.) In my head, i had omelets becoming commonplace in the U.S. later than this.

The site above shows omelet recipes in the 1965 NYTimes Cookbook, followed by JuliaChild in 1972.

Anybody know when they became somewhat mainstream/frequently found in home kitchens?? Thnx much.

p.s. maybe in Hollywood and CA. in general, home cooking was culinarily ahead of 'Mainstream America' ? ( I know this is produce related, but produce does go hand in hand w/ cooking: my mom and dad, from Va. and New Orl., never tasted artichokes until they met in CA. after WWII.)

[bbqboy]

As opposed to scrambled eggs?

[virtualguthrie]

How is that relevant to the question?

[bbqboy]

I suppose because folks have probably been putting stuff in eggs for as long as they have been eating eggs, and the idea that California led some postwar trend in omelets, among other things, struck me as amusing.

[sunshine842]

at the bottom of the foodtimeline.org page for eggs, they go on to talk about scrambled eggs...where this appears:

"We know that Ancient Romans scrambled eggs (ie, broke the yolks and mixed them with the albumen), mixed them up with vegetables and spices, and baked them. These were the first omelettes. "

A rose by any other name, etc., etc., etc....

But somehow Hollywood will try to take the credit, anyway....

[Jay F]

I started in 1977. A new roommate brought an omelet pan with her, and showed me how.

[magiesmom]

I grew up in the 50's and 60's with omelets .

[pikawicca]

Me too.

[EWSflash]

Me too. my mom used to make crepes and big square puffy omelets in a big square electric skillet once or twice a month- I loved them. That would be in the late 1960s and early to mid 1960s.

[paulj]

There are various styles of omelets (see the recent 'best omelet' thread). The quick cooked French style probably became popular with Julia Child (I learned it from Joy of Cooking in the early 1970s). But coffee shops and diners were serving omelets (e.g. Denver omelet) much earlier. The hangtown fry dates to the California goldrush days (1850s).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omelette

[opinionatedchef]

thanks for that link. i was looking for your hangtown fry reference but it's not there; what is a hangtown fry?

[pikawicca]

Bacon and fried oyster omelet.

[Perilagu Khan]

In an episode of MASH, Colonel Potter has a "Western Omelet." Episode was probably from the mid-to-late 70s, but if the scriptwriters were scrupulously historically accurate--no sure thing!--then omelets in US cuisine would date to no later then the early 50s insofar as that's when the Korean War occurred.

[paulj]

And Bunter made omelets for Lord Peter in the 1920-30s - not for breakfast, but as a quick supper at odd late night hours.

[opinionatedchef]

paul, love the wiki piece you linked;thnx. weren't bunter and LP british characters?

[paulj]

I debated commenting on the Britishness of the characters and author. But Sayers doesn't write of omelets as though they were exotic imports from France.

According to Google's word search
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=omelet%2Comelette&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=4&smoothing=3
the more British spelling, omelette, peaked in popularity in English fiction around 1930. Also from that, I don't see big differences between American and British usages over time.

http://books.google.com/books?id=OmAE...
is cookbook from about 1910, with about a dozen omelet recipes, differing mostly in filling (including one with rhubarb).

Curiously in American usage there is a drop around 1960, with a climb since then.

[opinionatedchef]

well paul, you have some talented researcher chops there! fascinating. below is a link to the graph done for AMERICAN english books. i have no idea what books they are using for this data,and i won't confuse books with actual home kitchen practices, but this is still very interesting. maybe i'll call Reference at the schlesinger library at radcliffe. my 102 years old grandmother would have been helpful with this question but she died 20 years ago. thnx paul.

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?...

[Seeker19104]

Enjoyed eating Western omelets no later than 1957 in Brooklyn at a luncheonette in Bensonhurst near my dentist. Then I thought that ketchup was an essential accompaniment, Soon after we did the classical French-style omelet at home as demonstrated by Julia Child on The French Chef.

[purple bot]

Waaay back when I was in high school, we had cooking class as part of home ec. Omelets were one of the first things we learned, and actually, the only one I remember.

[gaffk]

That was my thought exactly--a cheese omelet was the first thing we learned in home ec (mid-70s) and my classmates and I had all had them at home.

[sunshine842]

since omelettes have been around since Ancient Persia or so -- and the word appeared in the French language in the 17th century, and a recipe was published (courtesy of your link) in London in 1685, it's not a big stretch to figure that omelets came to the US with the first settlers and explorers...

It's a cheap, easy-to-prepare, yet nutritious way to fill the hole -- so I figure they've been popular (allowing for the natural ebb and flow of fashions) ever since.

[JoanN]

http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodeggs....

Scroll down to see the section on "omelettes."

Doesn't say when they first became popular, but it does say when, and where, the recipes first appeared in cookbooks published in the U.S.

[Chefpaulo]

From early childhood (1950's), I remember my grandmother making me jelly omelets with Welch's grape jelly and a side of home fries. Come to think of it, I haven't seen a jelly omelet on a diner menu in decades. But beaten eggs sauteed in butter and spread with a Tbs. of jelly before folding it over was a childhood staple.
CP
P.S. @ Perilagu Khan. The MASH script writers were not adamant about research for historical accuracy. One episode featured a photographer using a Hasselblad - a camera not invented until 1958. So, Potter's "Western" omelet may be a similar lapse in fact finding.

[opinionatedchef]

as to MASH, i would say "uh oh. Trouble in River City."

but i'm thinking more about my question. WWII affected so many things in our culture. Maybe the GIs brought back omelet experiences from the war, and helped the omelet go mainstream here.
(of course, maybe not- . maybe it was earlier than the 50s. we shall continue to probe.)

[Allstonian]

The 1896 edition of Fannie Merritt Farmer's THE BOSTON COOKING-SCHOOL COOK BOOK, which is posted on Michigan State University's Feeding America website, offers 9 recipes for omelets. The 1918 edition is posted on bartleby.com; it offers 13 or 14 recipes.

[aurora50]

Here's my 2 cents: In the movie "Sabrina" (1954, I believe), Audrey Hepburn goes to cooking school in France, brings back her expertise and training to crack eggs to make an omelet for Humphrey Bogart.

[opinionatedchef]

of course! and lauren learned from her husband's co-star and then had them put into her 1957 script. of course! now this all finally makes sense...:-}

[paulj]

1850

http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodpioneer.html#frontier

1853 Weekly menu for middle-class home has omelet for Wed, Fri and Sunday breakfast

http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodpione...
1849 upscale restaurant menu in San Francisco has ' rum omelette, jelly omelette' deserts, at a pricey $2 (more than the entrees)

[huiray]

Interesting.

However, what caught my eye more was the ridiculous amount of food proffered to Queen Victoria in the section further down... :-)

[MonMauler]

Funnily enough, I made omelettes (kind of) this evening for a group of about 8 friends...

Basically, what I did was a western/Denver omelette (with cheddar), and I placed each into a buttered and toasted hoagie roll. Then, as is sometimes customary 'round these parts, I topped the sandwiches with homemade fries, vinegary coleslaw, and a couple slices of tomato. They were delicious!

Interestingly, as I understand it, the western/Denver sandwich, of which I made a localized variation, was the precursor to the western/Denver omelette. The story I heard (and prefer to believe) indicates that the sandwich came about as settlers moved west in the 1800's. As the eggs would turn due to lack of refrigeration, the settlers found they could only make them palatable with the addition of ham, onions and peppers. They made such fried egg concoction into a meal by slapping the fried egg mixture between bread to make the western/Denver sandwich. Eventually, through time and the subtraction of bread, this dish became the western/Denver omelette.

Of course, I am by no means trying to imply that omelettes or similar fried egg concoctions did not exist long before such time. I was just surprised to see a thread pertaining to the delicious dinner I had tonight and wanted to share my sentiments. If you have the opportunity to have a western/Denver sandwich, do so.

[Will Owen]

"As the eggs would turn due to lack of refrigeration, the settlers found they could only make them palatable with the addition of ham, onions and peppers." It takes an awfully long time for an egg to "turn", and if one does it will be not merely unpalatable but utterly inedible. I've not refrigerated mine for quite a few years now, nor is that practice common in most of the rest of the world.

Omelets were a common thing in our family, and on the menu at most restaurants and diners of the time; this in the Midwest of the 1940s and '50s. These were however the puffy kind, a sort of pan-fried soufflé; the "nice" brown exterior Mom was so proud of was something I hated, and had to peel off before I could eat the rest. Tasted like burnt hair. It was Julia that showed me how to do the quick French kind, ca. 1967 or so, and I've done about one a week ever since.

[paulj]

The 1960s edition of Joy of Cooking describes the common American 'great puffy, soufflelike, rather dry dish', and contrasts it with the French 'three fold delicacy'. The recipes include
French omelet
flufy or souffled omelet
baked omelet
firm omelet
sweet omelet
egg foo yoong
frittata

[Will Owen]

My problem was that I hated the puffy ones so much I dismissed the whole category out of hand. It took Julia's flamboyant TV presentation to get my attention and turn me around. The only cookbook I owned at the time was the red-plaid cover BH&G; the other 500+ were far in the future …

[sunshine842]

Heh - the first cookbook I bought myself, because my mom had the old version.

I still have it, by the way, and have several recipes that I still use, because they're still the best in class. (The BHG White Cake Supreme is a classic, and it's a super white layer cake for LOTS of things. I use it for birthday cakes, tiered cakes, and awesome shortcakes -- and everyone raves about it because it's moist, but light-textured)

[paulj]

http://books.google.com/books?id=NEoC...
is a 19th c cookbook, with several pages of egg recipes (p223). Off hand I don't see an omelet recipe, but there are variations on scrambled like 'jumbled eggs' (break the eggs in the pan and then stir). I also found references to 'mumbled eggs', which may or may not be the same. One recipe even tries to keep the yolks whole while stirring the whites.

And it also recommends coating the shells with oil or wax to close pores, and retard spoilage.

[Will Owen]

"Jumbled" eggs! So there really is a name for my favorite kind! I've been calling them "scrambulated" … The only mention of those I've read was in one of Nika Hazelton's cookbooks, in which she abandoned all pretense of objectivity and spoke freely of her prejudices. I put up with most of it, until the sentence in which she said that streaky scrambled eggs "are disgusting." Not "I don't like them" or "I think they're disgusting"! I came very close to hurling the book across the room …

[huiray]

Huh. "Jumbled eggs".
It seems that stirring up the eggs in a pan IS scrambling them, no? ;-)
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/8211...

[opinionatedchef]

Will, i'm a bit confused. you don't refrig your eggs? and they don't refrig them in europe and england? if that is the case for you, how long is it o.k. to hold them at room temp, in the various seasons, for you?

[Will Owen]

If we've had enough consecutive days of 100º+ temperatures to heat up the ground floor, I'll stick the eggs in the fridge, but they generally sit out in a usually cool spot in the kitchen. As I go through a dozen in six or seven days, I don't know what the critical limit might be. The problem with long-term keeping is not so much spoilage - that's a sterile environment in there, unless the hen was infected with salmonella - as it is evaporation. In the old days, eggs were prepared for long-term keeping by immersing them for a while in "waterglass", a solution of sodium silicate, and then allowing them to dry. This would render the shells airtight. They were usually kept in clean straw or hay in a box in the spring house or cellar.

[sunshine842]

Nope, eggs are not refrigerated in Europe or England. They are rinsed, not pressure washed as in the US, so you might have one or two that aren't particulary pretty, but they have not had the natural coating blasted off of them, so they last quite well.

I've successfully kept eggs a couple of weeks on the counter in the winter, when the house is cooler. I'm with Will -- if it's very warm, I'll put them in the fridge.

[Will Owen]

I'd never have done this much of the year in our brick house in Nashville, but here in SoCal we have a frame house that was built in 1908. The high ceilings, plus the fact that our nights are almost always very much cooler, keeps the downstairs comfortable until it's been high 90s or hotter for about a week. We don't even have AC on the ground floor.

[Puffin3]

Edward Bernays was a marketing genius who 'invented' the notion of 'eating a healthy breakfast'. I think he was directly responsible for getting average people to eat eggs in the morning in whatever form. Until Bernays came along it was not common for eggs to be eaten for breakfast. "To bump up sales, [of bacon] Bernays put together a physicians survey advocating a "hearty breakfast." Eggs and bacon, according to the survey, fell in that category. Soon after Bernays mailed the results to 5,000 more doctors, bacon sales soared."

[paulj]

Is there any source for that Bernays attribution, beyond the 2005 NPR story? What year did he do this promotion? I got the impression from Foodtimeline that eggs and bacon were both common in the 19th c. In fact bacon was a staple for many Americans. It was both cheap and kept well.

The early 1900s was when cold cereals were invented, initially as breakfast food at a vegetarian sanitarium.

There probably was a shift in breakfast as people moved from farms to the city. On a farm breakfast (and all the meals) was based on what you grew and raised, and that would have included eggs from the chickens, and milk from the cow. Bacon could have come from the pig you (or your neighbor) butchered last winter, or was bought along with flour and sugar from the general store. In the city most food was bought, including the hot and cold processed cereals (Quaker Oats, Cream of Wheat, Corn Flakes, Grapenuts were some early examples), as well as bakery bread.

[Puffin3]

I'm not sure when Bernays did the 'A big breakfast is good for you. I saw a documentary a few years ago about him and it mentioned the bacon and egg campaign. I think the bacon producers wanted a bigger market share of the breakfast meal and hired Bernays.

[opinionatedchef]

that is so cool! love learning about this. i'll have to research that documentary!

[paulj]

Bernays's own words on how to sell bacon (

http://books.google.com/books?id=JlcP...
p 76 1928

However I suspect that the claim that he coined 'bacon and eggs' is apocryphal. Via Google Books I am finding that phrase in the 19th c. Some sources are British, but at least on is American.

[sueatmo]

I learned to make an omelet in the early '70s from a wartime cookbook of my mother's. As I recall there were at least 2 examples--French omelet and Omelet. I believe one had a little added milk and one had a little added water, and the techniques might have been different from each other. I'll have to locate these to prove my memory. I still have the cookbook, poor ragged thing.

[mamachef]

Not having done any research whatsoever, please don't quote or jump on me for this answer, but here's my impression.
Escoffier certainly wrote about omelets. I couldn't begin to tell you how long they've been around, but, certainly remember reading about them being served regularly at the turn of the century, in "Continental Cuisine" Hotels, and in French restaurants. It's worth noting though, that most of those hotel chefs were imported. As in, from France.
I'd bet they came into a more popular useage in America in the early '50's. I know that edition of Joy of Cooking had a method and recipe. And then there's Julia and Simone Beck, who brought it home just as well, with Mastering the Art, which is where many MANY classic French recipes came into popular home cooking accessibility: the coq au vin, the mother sauces. And funny, how some things didn't catch on until so many years later than that: the dacquoise, the quenelles - as recognizable and possible not only for restaurant chefs but for the home cook.
Good question.

[opinionatedchef]

mama, your thoughts are all certainly valid. my only differing is that, at least in my awareness, dacquoise(my fav dessert, bar none!) and quenelles (beloved memories from a 1990 Quebec trip)- are still not in the repertoire of the great majority of american home chefs! but fortunate we are that so many other french creations-are!

[Will Owen]

There's a recipe for quenelles, as an extension of the one for fish forcemeat, in the booklet that came with my Cuisinart ca. 1982. That was the first I knew of them. I've still not tried any, though when we were at Mrs. O's French relatives' summer place in Burgundy we were visited by a mobile butcher shop. While the cook was buying a calves head and a few Guinea fowl, I was checking out the other stuff on display, which included a big pan of ready-formed quenelles. But Margo put her nose up at them, I assume because if there were going to be quenelles on the menu they'd be HER quenelles!

[INDIANRIVERFL]

For our family, it occured during the summer of 69. They were the most predictable breakfast on a 9 week trip from Pittsburgh to Tijuana to Victoria and back. Never had them before that.

This was also the trip that we first had Mexican food that wasn't a frozen dinner. Taco Bell.

[hazelhurst]

I find it remarkable that your father (if I have the relations right) never had artichokes in New Orleans. They were very popular prior to WWII and most came from Plaquemines Parish in the 1920's and before. I know my mother was eating omelettes in NOLA in the 1930s..she often ordered them at the old line restaurants.

[opinionatedchef]

hazel, that's so interesting.i didn't realize artichokes were grown in LA.; i always thought they were just a CA crop back then. Maybe because my dad's family was very poor? he told us about going to school w/ his lunch of a baguette hollowed out and 'filled' w/ caro syrup. So nutritional.....

The omelets don't surprise me at all, w/ the Fr heritage there.

[hazelhurst]

I was always told that Plaquemines Parishi was the first place in the New World to grow them. The farms died out a little before WW II but I used to get some from a guy across from Pointe a la Hache years ago. The vegetable truck by the Seminary on Carrolton (a/k/a "The Priest Factory") claimed that his were from down there and that was int he 1970's/80's.

[opinionatedchef]

my dad was born in NOLA in1922. wouldn't it be fascinating to find a local artichoke tradition in the local food there from the early 20th c.? sounds like a great research article for the food section of the NO paper. artichokes etouffee?! here's what i found after a bit of googling. can't find anything that claims 'the very FIRST artichokes grown in america..." but maybe further research.... The Dutch introduced artichokes to England, where they grew in Henry VIII's garden at Newhall in 1530. They were brought to the United States in the 19th century, to Louisiana by French immigrants and to California by Spanish immigrants. The name has originated from the Arabic al-kharshof, through a northern Italian dialect word, articiocco.[8] Revised March 2011. ------------------------------------------------ Native to the Mediterranean region, artichokes were brought to the United States in the 1800s and first grown in Louisiana by French immigrants and in California by the Spanish. Today artichokes are grown almost exclusively in California, which accounts for more than 99 percent of national production.

hey hazel! i have just found a usda 1920 report about artichokes in the Pla..... county!

http://books.google.com/books?id=XEHO...

[hazelhurst]

Artichoke etouffee would be a helluva stretch since the Cajun world never really got into New Orleans until after WW II and etouffee itself did not come out of the swamps until about 1940. But it is worth a try. Kinda fusion cooking in a way.

There is a crawfish Yvonne that has artichokes in it. Was invented in the 1970's.

[opinionatedchef]

hazel, plse see my transferring of this discussion onto Gen'l CH Topics!

[hazelhurst]

That, as the kids used to say, is "way cool." I've always wanted to grow my own artichokes and now I know some of the blight I must confront. Thanks!

[Chefpaulo]

HH, I'd be intrigued as to how the LA parish was the first place in the New World to grow artichokes. From whence did they come? My understanding is that the Delmonico Bros. brought over artichoke, eggplant and fennel from Switzerland for their famous NY restaurant in the 1840's and were first growing all three out on Long Island, NY. If you have better documentation on this, I'm all ears.
CP

[paulj]

This history of Delmonicos mentions both artichokes and the LI farm
http://www.steakperfection.com/delmon...

[opinionatedchef]

paulo, because the artichoke topic is not omelet related, it now has its own thread here:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/827906

The links at the beginning of this discussion all talk about artichokes being brought over to the u.s. in the 18th c., to LA by French colonists and CA.by spanish colonists.

[hazelhurst]

It is my understanding that artichokes were established early-on by the colonists, probably as home garden items. As to when Plaquemine Parish became the farm for teh City, I don't know. I cannot imagine that there would have been a need for commercial farming until the 1800's.

Gotta be careful about restaurant history claims: the mendacity in that business is alwasy entertaining to me.

[svnirvana]

When I was cleaning out my parent's house after they died I came across a "Rudolph Stanish Omelet Pan". Depends on what you call "fairly common", but there are a lot of these pans around.

http://www.newportmansions.org/learn/history-highlights/servants-in-gilded-age-newport/rudolph-stanish

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08043/...

[opinionatedchef]

sv, i read through those links; so fascinating; thank you! i can't imagine aluminum being a good pan for omelets ; might you try it out?

[svnirvana]

I'll take a look at it when I can and give it a try (not home now) but I recall that it is a big heavy pan, maybe 1/4 inch thick or more. I don't think that there would be any hot spots... would most likely heat pretty evenly.

[opinionatedchef]

this will be so interesting!

[ipsedixit]

Can you define "fairly common"?

I'm not so sure that omelets are commonly cooked in American homes.

Commonly known, maybe. But commonly cooked? Not so much, me thinks.

[Jenny Ondioline]

Growing up in a small town in west Texas, I was making three-fold cheese omelets by the time I was seven (this would be mid-late '70s), although I'm sure they weren't very good. My Massachusetts-bred wife counts the aforementioned jelly omelets as one of her key household comfort foods as a kid. Neither of us grew up in houses of particularly adventurous eaters, and our socioeconomic status was lower-middle to middle class at best.

So anecdotally, at least, it seems to me that omelets are indeed "fairly common."

[meatn3]

I was a teen before I ever was aware of omelets - same with most of my contemporaries at the time.
It wasn't until I experienced late night meals after an evening clubbing that I discovered Denver omelets at Sambo's (the now defunct non-pc icon of the 24 hr. genre).

Early '80's TGIFridays opened in the area where I was living and their omelets with a wide array of fillings were very popular. That seemed to spur the beginnings of really getting them onto the home menu in my little world.

In the mid-70's I was dating someone who came to my house with a seasoned cast iron pan and made mushroom (fresh were still a novelty) omelets for me and my mother. She stills talks about how wonderful they were and what a great first exposure it was. We ate and proceeded to attempt to be helpful and almost washed the pan - resulting in another first - awareness of seasoning and caring for cast iron.

This is the only one of my ex's (perhaps a 2-3 month relationship) that she wistfully inquires about!

[opinionatedchef]

great story. wish you could turn it into a one pager so you could submit it to the NYTimes Sun. magazine endpage, Our Lives.

[Chefpaulo]

OK, gang, sorry about the artichoke digression.
Why I didn't think of this earlier, I'll never know. My 1907 "Encyclopedia of Practical Gastronomy" by Ali-Bab has a whole section on omelets indicating they were of culinary art status even back then.
CP

[opinionatedchef]

chefp, but this is a French book! And also, i'm not asking when omelets were first in american cookbooks. I'm asking when omelets became a common American household dish . Prob. need to talk to some American 90 yr olds.....