I Made an Egg-Yolk Omelet James Corden Would Hate

Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. Corden. Photo: Christopher Bonanos

On October 18, we moved on from the “negroni sbagliato with prosecco in it” to the egg-yolk omelet. Keith McNally, proprietor of Balthazar, the Odeon, and a delightfully unfiltered and occasionally batty Instagram voice, posted that popular automobile singer James Corden had been an absolute shit to the waiters at Balthazar. In one instance, he’d sent back an “egg yolk omelette with gruyere cheese and salad” that his wife, Julia Carey, had ordered, citing a visible bit of egg white, and did it nastily, “yelling” at the server when the kitchen returned it with “home fries instead of salad.” He was henceforth banned from the restaurant, at least until he called and apologized to McNally last night and got himself unbanned. The internet ate this up, taking it as confirmation that (a) James Corden is an ass, as previously rumored, and (b) Keith McNally’s Instagram captions are the best free entertainment in town.

But the Slack channels in our office, from Intelligencer to Curbed, simultaneously lit up to discuss a particular angle of this story. An egg-yolk omelet? All yolks?! Really?

We’ve all encountered the egg-white omelet, usually chosen for its high-protein, low-fat profile. Nobody here had ever encountered one made entirely of yolks. A couple of us wondered whether it had been a mistake in McNally’s information from his manager, that someone had intended to write “white” and instead wrote “yolk.” That made some sense: Far be it from me to question anyone’s breakfast choices, but sociologically speaking, not a lot of trim celebrity wives are ordering an intensely high-fat anything with a big handful of cheese added in. But the order reportedly went back to the kitchen specifically because it contained an errant streak of albumen. So it seems to have been legit: an all-yolk omelet. And who knows? Maybe Julia Carey is a keto enthusiast. Maybe she just likes what she likes. Maybe (and the Cordenian tantrum here would bear this out) she is viscerally repulsed by the slightest hint of egg white.

Can one really make such a thing — an omelet without egg whites? If so, is it any good? I had to try.

The classic rolled French omelet requires a hot pan, butter, and a bit of technique that I have not exactly mastered but can carry off well enough. You swish the eggs around for a few seconds in hot butter to start setting them, then jerk the pan handle back toward yourself, tilting it forward slightly, to get the mass to coalesce at the far end of the skillet and begin to curl up. Then you tilt the whole business over onto your plate, rolling the inner edge as you do. The entire time on the heat is less than a minute. The yolks provide silkiness, the whites provide puff, and the finished omelet comes out fluffy and pale yellow. Without the whites, I thought, would this be a dense slab of borderline inedibility? (The few internet recipes out there suggest that it is more crepe than omelet.) I didn’t have any Gruyère in the house, but I do have a chive plant growing on the windowsill, so this was going to be a variation on a classic: omelette aux fines herbes à la Corden pique.

Separating the eggs was straightforward enough. I used three, instead of my usual two, to make up for the lost egg-white volume.

Photo: Christopher Bonanos

But when I beat the yolks, I realized that this was far too thick a mixture to get into the pan smoothly and make a nice omelet. It was not frothy and liquid, as beaten whole eggs are; it was a thick goo. I loosened it up with a couple spoonfuls of cream, which helped a little, and added the aforementioned chives, because we’re being Balthazar-fancy here.

Photo: Christopher Bonanos

Cooking and rolling it went relatively normally, as you can see. I lost a little bit of yolk on the stovetop near the end. C’est la vie.

But wait: I had to Cordenize this, and that meant incorporating the detail that set Mr. and Mrs. Late Late Show down this terrible road. There had to be a visible bit of egg white on this egg-yolk monstrosity. So one spoonful of albumen went into the pan afterward, on its own, and I carefully placed it atop the omelet, creating a Corden-infuriating all-protein garnish.

Photo: Christopher Bonanos

A bit of salt at the end, and we’re done.

Photo: Christopher Bonanos

Mine’s a little rough, but the result is pretty anyway, because the yolks make it bright yellow. As for taste and texture, it wasn’t bad, but it was … heavy. Really intensely eggy. If I were to make one again, I’d try beating in some milk instead of the cream, though I’m not sure that would make a huge difference. The omelet is also really small, because (particularly without cheese to bulk it up) it’s effectively three half-eggs in size, significantly less than the usual two-egg omelet. In other words, it’s a few keto bites of a meal — unless, like me, you have it with a bialy. Presumably the Cordens will continue to enjoy this off-menu order now that they’re un-banned. Our condolences to the Balthazar line cooks, who probably had to make 50 of these this morning and will be forced to separate eggs by the gross this winter, serving every influencer who visits town. At least they will have lots of leftover whites for the macarons.