Today I'm happily chugging along, researching and writing about the origin of omelets - I've been here before, but thinking I may be close to wrapping up their history. Like many recipes there are hints, as would be expected, that Romans enjoyed them. Then, while examining a history on British food, I encounter the following sentence: "The omelet - including the cheese omelet - was a regular English dish in the Middle ages, when it was called a fraysee (or froyse)." [Grigson, Jane, "English Food", p28 (Penguin Books::London) 1992]
I love finding (and eventually sharing) little gems like this, but am surprised after reading dozens of omelet histories to only now stumble across this knowledge for the first time. Being such a basic recipe, it is logical that recipes resembling omelets would likely have been prepared in the kitchens of medieval England. I have already located a 1653 recipe titled "Eggs and Cheese", which would produce an omelet in the kitchens of today. Of course, now I get to again enjoy reviewing several centuries of cookbooks and cookery manuscripts to seek out (and capture) recipes titled fraysse or froyse.
I did poke about a bit in an attempt to research their etymology, but so far have not turned up the background of either word, though I'm guessing they are related. Etymology of current 'modern' English is usually a straight-forward process of research, but words which have faded from use are more challenging (to impossible) to trace.
It is side trip surprises like this which make tracing the origin and evolution of each recipe so much fun.
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