No. 2904

Physiological Omelet

Omelette Physiologique

Blanch some oysters or mussels in their own liquor; drain and cut into pieces, removing the feet from the mussels and the muscles from the oysters; add as much marinated tunny fish and as much fresh smoked herring meat and carp milt cut in three-eighths of an inch dice. Fry some shallots in butter, add the oysters, milt, herring and tunny fish, all cut in three-eighths of an inch squares, also parsley, chives, chopped mushrooms, salt, pepper, nutmeg and lemon juice. Fill an omelet with this preparation, the same as an Argentine (No. 2878), and pour around a rather thin cream bechamel (No. 411).

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For the Modern Kitchen

A filled French omelet from Ranhofer's Epicurean, built on a hash of shellfish, cured fish and soft roe. The filling is the whole dish; the eggs are a wrapper, and the two cross-references are what make the original look thinner than it is.

The hinge: blanch, do not cookOysters and mussels go into their own liquor (they are already shucked at this point) only until the edges just ruffle and firm — a matter of a minute or two. They are then cooked again with the shallots, so anything held long at the first stage risks turning rubbery before it reaches the pan.
"Feet" and "muscles"What Ranhofer calls the mussel's foot is the tough tongue of tissue to which the fibrous byssus threads (the "beard") attach; pull the beard and trim the foot after blanching. The oyster's muscle is the tough opaque adductor where it was attached to the shell, which stays chewy no matter how gently you treat it. Both are removed for texture, not safety.
Carp miltSoft roe — the male fish's sperm sacs, sold as milt or laitance. Carp milt is effectively unavailable at retail now; herring or shad soft roe is the usual stand-in, and either should be poached briefly and firmed before dicing.
Marinated tunny and smoked herringTunny is tuna. "Marinated" here probably indicates tuna put up in oil, or oil and vinegar, rather than fresh — good jarred tuna in olive oil is a reasonable stand-in. "Fresh smoked herring meat" seems to mean a lightly, cold-smoked herring — kipper or bloater — boned and skinned, rather than the hard salt-cured kind, which would overwhelm the dish.
Three-eighths of an inchRoughly a 1 cm dice. Ranhofer repeats the measurement twice because uniformity matters: the pieces must be small enough to sit inside a rolled omelet without tearing it.
The cross-referencesNo. 2878, the Argentine omelet, is the filled-omelet method Ranhofer is pointing back to: cook the eggs soft, lay the hot garnish down the centre, fold or roll onto the plate. No. 411 is his bechamel; here it is called for as a cream bechamel, and "rather thin" suggests it should pool around the omelet rather than coat it, so slacken it accordingly.
Seasoning restraintTuna, kipper and oyster liquor all carry salt. Season the filling at the end, after the lemon juice, and salt the eggs separately and lightly.
YieldNot stated. A three-egg omelet with this quantity of filling serves one generously or two as a first course; the filling itself is enough for two or three omelets and is best made in a batch.

A Little History

The name appears to be a nod to Brillat-Savarin's Physiologie du goût (1825), which gives a celebrated recipe for a tuna and carp-roe omelet — the omelette du curé. Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York and a thorough cataloguer of the French repertoire, keeps the defining pair of ingredients, soft roe and preserved tuna, and enriches them with oysters, mussels and smoked herring in the manner of a late-nineteenth-century restaurant kitchen that had all of them on hand at once. It appears in The Epicurean (1894) among more than thirty numbered omelets, dignified with a cream sauce and a literary name.