No. 2906

Shrimp Omelet

Omelette aux Crevettes

Cut each shrimp in quarter-inch squares and mingle with an allemande sauce (No. 407) well buttered with lobster butter (No. 580); season, adding lemon juice, and just when ready to serve fill the omelet with the same and finish as for an Argentine omelet (No. 2878); pour the sauce around. The shrimps may be replaced by lobster or hard-shell crab meat.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes in cross-references: this entry is really three recipes stacked, and the omelet itself is the least of them. Assemble the sauce and the butter first, because the eggs take ninety seconds and cannot wait.

Allemande sauce, in shortNo. 407 is the period allemande: a velouté (white stock thickened with blond roux, reduced with mushroom cooking liquor) finished off the heat with a liaison of egg yolks and cream, and sharpened with lemon juice. Once the yolks go in it must not boil or it will curdle into scrambled threads. Ranhofer gives no quantity; roughly a cup of finished sauce will fill a two- or three-egg omelet and leave some to pour around.
Lobster butterNo. 580 is a compound butter: lobster shells and coral pounded with butter, warmed gently, then strained and chilled. It contributes colour as much as flavour. If you have no shells, a tablespoon of good butter with a pinch of sweet paprika gets the tint but not the depth; say so to yourself rather than pretending it is the same thing.
Cook the shrimp firstThe recipe assumes shrimp already cooked, since it begins with cutting. Poach them briefly in salted water, shell, then cut into quarter-inch dice as directed.
Do not cook the shrimp again in the sauceWarm the diced shrimp through in the sauce for a minute at most, well under a simmer. Shrimp held in hot sauce turn to rubber quickly, and the yolk-bound allemande will break if you push the heat.
The Argentine finishNo. 2878 is a rolled omelet: filled and turned out onto the platter. The pan should be hot enough that the eggs set on contact, with the interior left barely set.
Lemon at the endThe lemon juice goes in with the seasoning just before filling, not during the reduction. It sharpens the buttery sauce and keeps the shellfish from tasting flat.
SubstitutionsRanhofer's own alternatives — lobster or picked hard-shell crab — work on the same terms: cooked, diced small, warmed in the sauce. Crab is the most fragile and should be folded in last so the lumps survive.
YieldNo quantities are given in this entry, as often in The Epicurean. Figure three eggs, about 3 oz diced shrimp and a cup of sauce as one serving; omelets of this kind do not scale well beyond a single portion per pan.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, and The Epicurean (1894) is less a cookbook than a numbered index of everything that establishment could produce — some 3,000 entries, each assuming the reader has the rest of the book, and a brigade, at hand. The shrimp omelet is a fair specimen of that method: a line of instruction, three cross-references, and an unstated assumption that lobster butter and allemande sauce are already standing in the larder. Omelets filled with shellfish in a rich white sauce belong to the French repertoire Ranhofer brought with him from Paris and Alsace, and the naming convention — aux crevettes, and the neighbouring Argentine and Spanish omelets — reflects the period habit of tagging a garnish with a place name whether or not the connection meant much.