“There is no menu on the table; the waiter or, more usually, in these smaller places, the waitress explains things to you as you go along. Each course carries two dishes, _au choix_. There are no _hors d'oeuvres_; you dash gaily into the soup. The tureen is brought to the table, and you have as many goes as you please. Hot water, flavoured with potato and garnished with a yard of bread, makes an excellent lining for a hollow stomach. This is followed by omelette or fish. Of the two evils you choose the less, and cry "Omelette!" When the omelette is thrown in front of you it at once makes its presence felt. It recalls Bill Nye's beautiful story about an introspective egg laid by a morbid hen. However, if you smother the omelette in salt, red pepper, and mustard, you will be able to deal with it. I fear I cannot say as much for the fish. Then follows the inevitable chicken and salad, or perhaps Vienna steak, or _vol-au-vent_. The next item is Camembert or fruit, and coffee concludes the display.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
1494. Take, for 6 persons, the roes of 2 carp; [Footnote: An American writer says he has followed this recipe, substituting pike, shad, &c., in the place of carp, and can recommend all these also, with a quiet conscience. Any fish, indeed, may be used with success.] bleach them, by putting them, for 5 minutes, in boiling water slightly salted. Take a piece of fresh tunny about the size of a hen's egg, to which add a small shalot already chopped; hash up together the roe and the tunny, so as to mix them well, and throw the whole into a saucepan, with a sufficient quantity of very good butter: whip it up until the butter is melted! This constitutes the specialty of the omelet. Take a second piece of butter, _à discrétion_, mix it with parsley and herbs, place it in a long-shaped dish destined to receive the omelet; squeeze the juice of a lemon over it, and place it on hot embers.
Sources: The passage is from Thomas Burke, Nights in London, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Beeton, The Book of Household Management of 1861, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — navy cloth, teapot stamp.