“At last it began to be rainy and cold. We went to Italy, and I telegraphed to my father begging him for mercy's sake to send me eight hundred roubles to Rome. We stayed in Venice, in Bologna, in Florence, and in every town invariably put up at an expensive hotel, where we were charged separately for lights, and for service, and for heating, and for bread at lunch, and for the right of having dinner by ourselves. We ate enormously. In the morning they gave us _café complet_; at one o'clock lunch: meat, fish, some sort of omelette, cheese, fruits, and wine. At six o'clock dinner of eight courses with long intervals, during which we drank beer and wine. At nine o'clock tea. At midnight Ariadne would declare she was hungry, and ask for ham and boiled eggs. We would eat to keep her company.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
tongue, or cheese, in the proportion of one tablespoonful to one egg; proceed to mix and cook in the same way as for omelette with herbs. 77. =Omelette with Oysters.=--Blanch one dozen small Blue Point oysters, by bringing them just to a boil in their own liquor, seasoned with a dust of cayenne, a saltspoonful of salt, and a grate of nutmeg; mix an omelette as above, omitting the herbs, place it over the fire, and when it begins to cook at the edges, place the oysters, without any liquor, in its centre, and fold and serve it in the same manner as the omelette with herbs. 78.
Sources: The passage is from Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Project Gutenberg Compilation of Short Stories by Chekhov, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Corson, The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical of 1877, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — moss cloth, teapot stamp.