Also Omelette du Mont-Saint-Michel, Mont-Saint-Michel omelette
Eggs beaten long and hard, then cooked over a wood fire in a long-handled pan with plenty of butter, until tall and airy, like a soufflé.
What makes it omelette de la mère poulard
Eggs whisked long until very frothy, sometimes the whites apart.
A lot of Norman butter.
Cooked over an open fire in a long-handled pan, and folded high and soft.
Where it comes from
It comes from an inn below the abbey on Mont-Saint-Michel, run in the late nineteenth century by a cook remembered as Mère Poulard, who fed pilgrims and tourists arriving with the tides. The omelette was quick to make and filled them up.
Its lightness has been argued over ever since: most say it's the beating, in copper bowls to a rhythm you can hear from the street, and the butter; some say a spoon of cream. The inn still makes it, at a price.