Contrary to popular perception Arnold Bennett did not spend a substantial number of his mealtimes consuming the eponymous omelette. Only two years after the Omelette Arnold Bennett was created for him in 1929 by by Jean Baptiste Virlogeux, a chef at The Savoy, the author was dead at just 63. Cause was typhoid, contracted by drinking tap water in the South of France. Suicide has been suggested such was his unhappiness despite his wealth and fame. A recent biography has vividly described him as a chronic insomniac, “his brief rest ruined when ‘flatulence damnably announced itself’.”

As a best-selling author and hyperactive journalist from humble origins in the Potteries, his work was famously dismissed by Virginia Woolf and other snooty literati. I’m unsure whether his 34 novels are much read these days – even Anna of the Five Towns or The Old Wives’ Tale. Which leaves us with that Omelette.

Essentially it’s a big deep omelette (5 big eggs) cooked in a 12 inch pan – then smoked haddock, which has been lightly poached in milk. is flaked into the top of the egg mixture  while it is still liquid. Add double cream, finely grated Parmesan cheese… and grilled till lightly brown.

It’s still on the menu at the Savoy, where Bennett stayed while researching his last finished novel, Imperial Palace, which was set in the hotel. It’s still there a £14 starter on the River Restaurant menu; at the Savoy Grill for nine quid more taste how Gordon Ramsay has ‘upgraded’ it in to the ‘Arnold Bennett Soufflé’, featuring Montgomery Cheddar sauce.

In the same years when Mr Bennett was indulging in his favourite dish a large family house on the Windermere shoreline was being transformed into the Langdale Chase Hotel. Its new owners, Thwaites, closed it for most of 2023 for a multi-million pound refurbishment with spectacular results, not least a sympathetic enhancement of its period features.

Our recent visit featured a stay in possibly the pick of the 30 luxurious bedrooms, the Langdale Pikes Suite, with its sweeping views of the Lake (what fun to watch a sunset paddle boarder struggling to get back on his precarious craft!) and the sybaritic ‘Swallows and Amazons’ afternoon tea, but a delightful bonus lit up the breakfast menu. Yes, there, in the specials, under the inevitable kipper, ‘Omelette Arnold Bennett’.

Surely, it’s a bit rich to start the day with, suggested my wife? Of course not, my dear, I love a literary homage with lashings of double cream. It came, still steaming, in a searing skillet, a puffed up, golden moonscape of a dish. 

The most memorable OAB I’ve encountered since well over a decade ago I ‘author-sat’ Fergus Henderson. He was in Manchester for a Food and Drink Festival event that evening, so lunch at Sam’s Chop House seemed the perfect way to pass the afternoon. The two bottles of Gevrey-Chambertin Fergus ordered helped. Before ample platefuls of devilled kidneys (“this hits the spot, Neil”) we each indulged in an Omelette Arnold Bennett.

So is a liquid lunch the best excuse for the dish? Guardian recipe guru Felicity Cloake probably agrees with the time of day. She wrote: “Though Bennett himself seems to have enjoyed the dish as a post-theatre supper, this silky, smoky tangle of eggs, cheese and haddock is so ridiculously, deliciously rich that it’s best consumed well before bedtime … though I won’t judge you if you want to go back to bed afterwards.”

Since that Fergus epiphany I recall one disappointingly bland example at The ‘under new ownership’ Wolseley in London, where they charge a princely £19,50, and a splendiferous one for just £12 from Iain Thomas at The Pearl in Prestwich. https://www.thepearlmcr.com. It has recently returned to the menu at this benchmark indie bistro, which has just made it onto the Good Food Guide 100 Best Local Restaurant list, but it proudly illustrates their home page, so expect it back soon.

Iain used undyed smoked haddock for his version, which any chef worth his or her salt would do. Otherwise it’s about tweaks. Do you make it hollandaise-based or bechamel-based, or both? How much cream?

Here is the recipe used by the Savoy Grill under Ramsay:

Ingredients

400ml milk

3 cloves of garlic

300g smoked haddock

20g butter

20g plain flour

3 large eggs

1 sprig of thyme

½ teaspoon Dijon mustard

Cheddar cheese

Gruyere cheese

Chopped chives

Chopped parsley

Method

For the smoked haddock, bring to a simmer about 400ml of milk along with three crushed cloves of garlic and sprig of thyme. Add the fish and cook for around three minutes or until the haddock starts to flake. Be careful not to over cook as it will become dry. 

Drain off the fish reserving the milk and flake up the fish into nice big pieces. With the cooking milk from the fish make a white sauce with 200ml of the milk, 20g butter and 20g plain flour. Enhance the flavour with half a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, salt pepper and a few scrapes of nutmeg.

Cool the sauce slightly and add the haddock flakes. Stir lightly being careful not to break up the fish too much. If the sauce is too thick, add a little more of the milk. To cook the omelette, break three large eggs into a well buttered skillet pan, season and stir then let the egg cook out to form the omelette base. 

Remove from the heat and sprinkle on grated Cheddar and Gruyere cheeses, then add the haddock sauce mix to evenly cover the omelette. Sprinkle with a little more cheese and then place under a hot grill until lightly golden and bubbling.

Finish with some chopped chives and parsley and serve from straight from the pan.

The cosmopolitan Arnold Bennett

Virginia Woolf may well have labelled Bennett “the bootmaker”, but he transcended his provincial small town origins, living in Paris for 10 years and marrying a French woman. He was certainly a man who knew his way around restaurants. They even inspired his fiction. Here he recalls the genesis of The Old Wives’ Tale – a novel set in the Potteries but inspired by people watching in a Parisian cafe…

“A middle-aged woman, inordinately stout and with pendent cheeks, had taken the seat opposite to my prescriptive seat. I hesitated, as there were plenty of empty places, but my waitress requested me to take my usual chair. I did so, and immediately thought: with that thing opposite to me my dinner will be spoilt!’ But the woman was evidently also cross at my filling up her table, and she went away, picking up all her belongings, to another part of the restaurant, breathing hard.

“Then she abandoned her second choice for a third one. My waitress was scornful and angry at this desertion, but laughing also. soon all the waitresses were privately laughing at the goings-on of the fat woman, who was being served by the most beautiful waitress I have ever seen in any Duval. The fat woman was dearly a crotchet, a ‘maniaque’, a woman who lived much alone. Her cloak (she displayed on taking off it a simply awful light puce flannel dress) and her parcels were continually the object of her attention and she was always arguing with her waitress. And the whole restaurant secretly made a butt of her. she was repulsive; no one could like her or sympathise with her, but I thought — she has been young and slim once.”

I know the feeling. It is not just the temptation of the Omelette Arnold Bennett that has tightened the waistband of late.