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Fish Omelet
Break three eggs into a basin; add a table-spoonful of milk and a dessert-spoonful of grated cheese; beat them well together, and season with pepper and salt. Melt one ounce of butter in an omelet-or frying-pan, and add to it about two ounces of cold fish flaked; let it fry a little, and pour in the egg mixture; stir over a quick fire until it begins to set. Roll the omelet into the shape of an oval cushion towards the side of the pan, and when it acquires a golden colour turn it out on to a hot dish. Probable cost, 8d.
A three-egg omelet built around leftover cooked fish — a standard Victorian use for the remains of yesterday's boiled cod or salmon. The whole thing takes about three minutes once the pan is hot.
- The hinge: the fish must already be cooked"Cold fish flaked" means cooked fish, chilled and picked off the bone. Raw fish will not cook through in the time an omelet takes, and it will weep water into the eggs. Poached or baked cod, haddock, salmon or smoked haddock all work; two ounces is about 60 g, or a generous quarter-cup flaked.
- MeasuresA tablespoon of milk is roughly 15 ml; a dessertspoon of cheese is about two teaspoons, 10 ml — a modest amount, meant to season rather than to make a cheese omelet. One ounce of butter is 30 g, which is generous for a modern nonstick pan; half that is plenty.
- "A quick fire"Medium-high heat on a gas or induction hob. The pan should be hot enough that the egg sets on contact at the edges but not so hot that the butter browns before the eggs go in.
- Pan sizeUse an 8-inch (20 cm) pan for three eggs. Anything wider spreads the egg too thin to roll into the "oval cushion" shape the recipe describes.
- Stop stirring early"Stir over a quick fire until it begins to set" — then stop. Continued stirring past that point breaks the curd and you end up with scrambled eggs holding fish. The centre should still be visibly loose when you start rolling.
- Salt and the fishSeason lightly if the fish is smoked or was boiled in salted water. Smoked haddock in particular carries enough salt for the whole dish.
- YieldOne substantial breakfast or supper portion, or two if served with toast alongside. It does not reheat; make it to order.
- "Probable cost, 8d."Eightpence in pre-decimal currency. The book gives a probable cost for its recipes so a housekeeper could budget; how the figure was arrived at, and whether it counts the fish, is not stated.
Cassell's belongs to the great age of British household encyclopaedias, when a single fat volume promised to answer every domestic question, and its recipes are shaped by a kitchen economy in which nothing cooked was thrown away. A fish omelet is a leftovers dish first and a recipe second: yesterday's cooked fish reappears bound in egg. The omelet itself arrived in British cookery from France and by the later nineteenth century had been thoroughly domesticated "into the shape of an oval cushion" is the book's rendering of the French rolled omelette. The costing at the end, eightpence, reflects the book's practical audience: mistresses and cooks in modest households who needed to know what a dish would take out of the week's housekeeping money before deciding to make it.