“Omelettes cannot be made without breaking eggs.”
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I quote the words of my big dictionary.
My omelettes usually taste something like made out of sheet metal. And that’s an indication of where the word comes from.
Omelettes go back to the Roman times. The Romans used lamella to mean a small metal plate.
But then the French took over the word, meaning a small metal plate, but then they added and subtracted letters to come up with omelette.
In 1611 Randle Cotgrave writing in a dictionary of the French and English tongues, referred to a pancake of egges, using the spelling omelet.
Then in 1655 a Comical History of Francoin mentioned that a person was commanded to make an amuelet, “it being Friday”.
The word in its early days was not spelt as omelette or, if you happened to live in the United States, as omelet.
My Australian English Style Guide, with Pam Peters as editor, prefers omelet. Omelette came into the English language many years after omelet. My Macquarie and Collins dictionaries seem to prefer omelette.
My big dictionary has omelet as its first entry, followed by omelette.
But you must have eggs and they must be “beaten and stirred”. An omelette has to have eggs.
In the early days then word omelette was spelt in many forms, often as alumette or aumelette. Of course, people couldn’t spell in those days. They’re not much better now, but that’s another story.
The big dictionary quotes an old proverb, the introduction to this column, as an indication that people cannot accomplish something valuable without sacrificing something in itself valuable.
So, if you don’t have any eggs you cannot make an omelette.
My big dictionary says an omelette is “a dish consisting mainly of eggs whipped up, seasoned and fried, often varied by the addition of other ingredients, such as cheese, apples, parsley, chopped ham, fish, mushrooms etc”.
In 1859 a comment was made that “we are walking upon eggs … and the omelette will not be made without the breaking of some”.
English struggled with a word to describe eggs beaten and stirred. It came up with many variations, including omelet, omelette, even amulet and aumulet. Eventually, by usage, we have come up with omelette, or omelet if you prefer.
And if you want to make the world’s largest omelette, you will have to look at somewhere around 200,000 eggs, depending on the latest record.
