The French omelette probably began as a Persian herb dish
The omelette feels quintessentially French, yet it is thought to have started in ancient Persia, where it was nearly identical to kookoo sabzi, a herb-packed cousin of the frittata. The French word itself wandered through alumelle, amelette and aumelette before settling on its modern spelling in 1784.
At its simplest an omelette is beaten eggs, usually from chickens, fried in butter or oil, sometimes loosened with a splash of milk, cream or water and folded around fillings such as cheese, ham, mushrooms or chives. The vocabulary has a long paper trail. According to the food writer Alan Davidson the word omelette took hold in the mid-16th century, but a Parisian household manual of 1393 already used alumelle and alumete, Rabelais wrote of an homelaicte, La Varenne's cookbook of 1651 has aumelette, and Cuisine bourgeoise gave the modern form in 1784.
Cooks still argue about colour. Some sources want a golden-brown outside and a soft middle; American cookbooks modelled on high-end restaurants insist a true French omelette stays pale, cooked slowly over moderate heat and stirred at first so no curds or sticking form. Alexandre Dumas catalogued variations in his culinary dictionary, including a sweet version flavoured with kirsch or rum, sprinkled with sugar, branded with a hot poker and served with apricot and liquor sauce. The Norman omelette de la mère Poulard from Mont-Saint-Michel has been called the most famous in the world.
France alone has several schools. The Provençal style scatters fillings over the whole surface and flips the omelette, making it closer to a frittata, while crespéou stacks open omelettes into a layered cake. The Italian frittata itself mixes every ingredient into the eggs before slow cooking and can even use leftover pasta.
Travel east and the idea keeps mutating. Iranian omelettes add tomatoes and tomato paste, and nargesi pairs eggs with spinach and fried onion. Parsi pora brings chillies and coriander, and India has its bread omelette snack. Japan's tamagoyaki is seasoned with mirin, soy and bonito and cooked in a rectangular pan, while omurice wraps fried rice under ketchup. Korea rolls gyeran-mari as a side dish, and in the Philippines the word torta names a whole family, from shrimp to corned beef versions.
Source: Omelette
