No. 2941

Scrambled Eggs with Lobster, Garnished with Villeroi Oysters

Œufs Brouilles aux Homards, Garnis d'Huitres a la Villeroi

Add to some nearly finished scrambled eggs, prepared the same as for gravy (No. 2940), a salpicon of lobster cut in three-sixteenths of an inch dice. Dress the eggs when finished, smooth the surface and garnish around with Villeroi oysters (No. 698), or else mussels or scallops. The lobster salpicon can be replaced by one of shrimps or of crabs.

← No. 2940 Scrambled Eggs with Gravy Eggs & Omelets No. 2942 Scrambled Eggs with Mushrooms →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes in shorthand for a professional brigade, leaning on two cross-references the modern reader has to reconstruct: the scrambled-egg base (No. 2940) and the Villeroi oysters (No. 698). The dish is a soft egg base under a crisp fried garnish, and the contrast is the whole point.

The hinge: eggs stay softThe base recipe (No. 2940) is not reproduced here, but Ranhofer's scrambled eggs are cooked gently and stirred, and pulled while still loose and custardy. Fold the lobster in at the very end so it warms without cooking further, and plate immediately, since the eggs will keep tightening off the heat.
SalpiconA salpicon is simply an ingredient cut into small, even dice, here specified at three-sixteenths of an inch, or about 5 mm. Use meat from an already-cooked lobster; raw lobster added to nearly finished eggs will not cook through.
"A la Villeroi"Villeroi is a very thick, reduced velouté or allemande sauce used as a coating. Poached oysters are dipped in it, spread on a tray and chilled until firm, then breaded and deep-fried. The sauce sets like a glue so the crumb crust holds a moist oyster inside.
Poaching the oysters firstBring shucked oysters just to the point where the edges ruffle, no more than a minute or two in their own liquor. Simmering them longer, as older instructions sometimes suggest, turns them tough before they ever reach the fryer.
"Prepared the same as for gravy"No. 2940 finishes the eggs with a little meat gravy or jus. A few spoonfuls of good reduced veal or chicken stock, or the strained liquor from the lobster shells, gives the same effect without a stockpot of demi-glace.
"Dress the eggs"In this book, to dress means to arrange for service, not to sauce. Mound the eggs on a warmed platter, smooth the top with the back of a spoon, and ring the fried oysters around the edge so they stay crisp rather than sitting in the eggs.
Substitutions the text allowsRanhofer offers mussels or scallops for the oysters, and shrimp or crab for the lobster. Scallops in particular suit the Villeroi treatment because they are firm enough to hold the coating; small bay scallops need less than a minute of poaching.
YieldNo quantities are given. Figure two to three eggs and about an ounce and a half of diced shellfish per person, with two or three Villeroi oysters each as garnish.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in some three and a half thousand numbered entries, each assuming the reader can follow a cross-reference to a mother sauce or a base preparation. Sauce Villeroi is generally traced to the household of the Villeroy family in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France and had become, by Ranhofer's day, a standard classical method for turning a soft, wet ingredient into something that could be breaded and fried. Combining it with lobster and eggs is characteristic of the Delmonico's approach to luxury: American shellfish, plentiful on the Atlantic coast, dressed in French technique elaborate enough to justify the bill. The entry's brevity is the tell that this was a book for cooks rather than housewives, since nearly every instruction that would take real skill has been delegated to a number elsewhere in the volume.