No. 2902

Omelet with Caviare a la Stoekel

Omelette au Caviar a la Stoeckel

Dilute some caviare gradually with cream bechamel (No. 411) and with it fill a chopped parsley omelet (No. 2903). Blanch a few cucumbers cut the shape of cloves of garlic, cook in white broth (No. 194a) and have them so that when done the liquid has fallen to a glaze; remoisten with sour cream sauce; place these cucumbers around the omelet.

← No. 2901 Oyster Omelet Eggs & Omelets No. 2903 Parsley Omelet →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a Delmonico's assembly recipe: three cross-referenced preparations brought together on one plate. None of the components is difficult, but the original assumes you have the book's béchamel, broth and sour cream sauce already at hand.

The hinge: keep the caviar coolCaviar loses its texture and turns fishy and grainy the moment it is properly heated. Dilute it into béchamel that has been taken off the heat and cooled to just warm, and fill the omelet at the last second so the roe is warmed through rather than cooked.
What the cross-references areNo. 411 is a béchamel finished with cream; a plain béchamel of about 1 tbsp each butter and flour to 1 cup milk, enriched with a splash of cream, stands in exactly. No. 194 a is white broth, i.e. an unbrowned veal or chicken stock; unsalted chicken stock works. The parsley omelet at No. 2903 is presumably a rolled omelet with chopped parsley beaten into the eggs.
Proportions the original omitsFor a three-egg omelet, roughly 2 tbsp caviar loosened with 3 to 4 tbsp of the cream béchamel gives a filling that holds together without swamping the eggs. Add the sauce to the caviar a spoonful at a time, as the text says, or it goes soupy.
"The shape of cloves of garlic"This means turned vegetables: peel the cucumber, quarter it lengthwise, seed it, and cut into small tapered pieces about an inch long, then round the edges with a paring knife. Blanch briefly in salted water before the broth so they keep their colour.
Cooking to a glazeBarely cover the cucumbers with broth and simmer uncovered until the liquid has reduced to a syrupy film that coats them; judge by the look of the liquid rather than the clock. Cucumber gives up a lot of water, so taste for salt at the end rather than the start.
Sour cream sauce"Remoisten" means loosening the glazed cucumbers with a little of the sauce; a spoonful or two of sour cream, added off the heat, will stand in. Sour cream splits if it boils; warm it in the residual heat of the pan only.
Caviar to buyThe caviare here would have been sturgeon roe. Any good salted roe works, but salt levels vary enormously; taste before you add any salt to the béchamel, and skip salting the eggs beyond a pinch.
Yield and serviceA three-egg omelet serves one generously as a lunch or supper dish, two as a first course. It has to go to the table immediately; the filling is the whole point and it will weep if it stands.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of the kitchen he ran at Delmonico's in New York, and it is organised as a professional's cross-referenced system rather than a book of standalone recipes: the omelet, the béchamel, the broth and the sauce each carry their own number and are assumed to be in production somewhere on the line. Dishes carrying a personal name in this book are often said to honour patrons or colleagues with a garnish, a convention traditionally traced to French practice; the spelling of "Stoeckel" is not consistent between the heading and the text. The dish itself belongs to the brief American moment when caviar was cheap: through the 1880s and 1890s the Delaware and Hudson sturgeon fisheries supplied roe in such volume that a restaurant cook could afford to fold it into an omelet rather than dole it out by the spoonful. Those runs collapsed within a generation, which is why the same dish now reads as extravagant.