Every Easter, a brood of volunteers in Bessières, a small town in southern France, collects 15,000 eggs — not to dye them pastel colors or even hide them for children to find. Early on Easter Monday morning, they will crack open the prodigious pile, add two pounds of salt, a pound of pepper and a bucket of herbs, then whip it all up in massive pots. Another team, sporting tall chef’s hats, plops a dozen gallons of duck fat into a 13-foot-wide frying pan that weighs more than a ton and, wielding huge wooden paddles, stirs up a humongous omelet.
And in a year of many challenges, including the avian flu and the skyrocketing price of eggs, which has transformed the morning staple into a near-luxury for many, the omelet will be portioned out and distributed to the thousands of eager spectators for the same price as always: free.
The volunteers, dressed in yolk-yellow shirts and bright white pants, are members of the Confrérie Mondiale des Chevaliers de l’Omelette Géante de Bessières — the World Brotherhood of the Knights of the Giant Omelet — one of France’s gastronomic brotherhoods, which promote and protect regional comestibles. Most of the other thousand or more brotherhoods represent a local wine, cheese or traditional dish. This group, in a village about 20 miles northeast of Toulouse, is one of the few that puts its fondness for its foodstuff into action by creating a jumbo symbol of its devotion. This year’s celebration marks the 50th anniversary of the event.
Legend says the tradition began when Napoleon and his army were traveling near Bessières. A local innkeeper cooked him such a scrumptious scramble that the next day, the Little Corporal requested that all the eggs in the village be gathered and made into a whopping omelet for his soldiers. A more likely origin story can be traced to a custom in which the town’s teenagers gathered eggs from local farmers every year to make Easter omelets over a giant fire pit near the Tarn River, giving the omelets to people in need in the village.
In 1973, a group of friends decided to pay homage to that generous spirit by preparing the first “giant omelet” for the citizens of Bessières on Easter Monday. Local merchants signed on, and the tradition kept expanding.
“It’s a story of friendship, it’s a story of sharing,” says Aliette Vernheres, the president and grandmaster of the Confrérie, which counts more than 100 members who wear miniature copper skillets on ribbons around their necks.
Each year, many eager volunteers assist in the undertaking. The omelet is the capstone of a festive weekend: An orchestra plays on Saturday night; Easter Mass on Sunday is followed by a lunch of aligot (a traditional dish of mashed potatoes and cheese), then a children’s egg hunt in the afternoon.
The festivities on Easter Monday begin at 6 a.m., when the giant pan and all the utensils are brought to the town square. After a midmorning parade, volunteers break 15,000 eggs and cook them over a wood fire in the gigantic pan, whose handle was fashioned from a telephone pole. A taster is assigned to make sure the omelet has enough salt and pepper. The waiting crowd (which usually numbers between 3,000 and 5,000 people) watches the cooking and is finally handed plates with a generous serving of the omelet and, naturellement, a hefty hunk of French bread.
Unique among gastronomic brotherhoods, this group helped found sisterhoods in six French-speaking cities around the world (in Fréjus in southeastern France, plus cities in Canada, Argentina, Belgium, New Caledonia and the United States), which each undertake a similar project at different points during the year. All involve a huge pan, a lot of eggs, an army of helping hands and free distribution of the omelet.
And every year, on the Friday before Easter, Bessières, a town of less than 5,000, welcomes representatives from these organizations at a dinner to form alliances and celebrate their mutual dedication to “La Grandeur des Folies et l’Amitié en plus” (the madness of magnitude, plus the added bonus of friendship).
Gilles Belou, 43, a member of the brotherhood council, grew up with the giant-omelet tradition, since his parents were involved. He explained, in French, that “the magic of this association is that the members of the sister organizations are always received in the homes of the local members, so no one needs to stay in a hotel. It feels a bit like being in a big family.” Belou met his future wife when she traveled from Paris in 2000 to attend the festivities. They decided to marry and raise a family in Bessières.
They aren’t the only couple to meet over one of the giant omelets.
In Abbeville, La., the feast has been held each year since 1985. On Nov. 5, the giant omelet will be comparatively modest, with just over 5,000 eggs. Arlene Collée, the third grandmaster of the Abbeville brotherhood, met her husband, Luc Collée, when he came to visit Abbeville from Belgium. He had been traveling around the United States in his work for the Belgian military, heard about the Abbeville omelet and mistakenly thought it was an event for the Guinness Book of Records.
“I really didn’t know much about Louisiana or Cajun culture at the time,” he said. “But, I found that Cajun French reminded me of Walloon, an old language spoken in Belgium.” When he met Arlene, she was very busy with the event, but he did not give up, he said, and several years later they married in Abbeville on Omelet Day. They surprised their friends as they sported sashes with “Just Married” over their outfits.
Abbeville’s omelet caps off a weekend celebrating Cajun culture and language with music, art and a parade. Each of the satellite sites adds its own ingredients to make its omelet locally appropriate. Abbeville’s will include 15 pounds of crawfish tails, green peppers, onions, parsley and Tabasco sauce.
And, as in Bessières, young chefs will stir up their own oversize omelets, with 600-egg batches cooked in a four-foot skillet, then serve them to the crowd, continuing the tradition of generosity. (Event organizers in Bessières have seen a 3-cent-per-egg price increase in recent months and have sought out more local and national sponsors to help cover the costs of the event.)
Anne Saget, vice president of the Bessières group, says the events have helped broaden her worldview. Besides hosting and visiting Belgian members, she has traveled to Pigüé, in the Pampas region of Argentina, which was founded by French-speaking immigrants in 1884. She was impressed “that music and dance are very present in the lives of Argentinians” and got an intimate view of the culture when her hosts “barbecued a whole side of beef in their home with the ingenious use of several chimneys.”
“To see that generosity, altruism and the notion of sharing exist around the world,” she said, “… all these exchanges give me the opportunity to discover countries, cultures and ways of life different from my own.”
