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Lobster Omelette
(Paris.) Chop finely the meat of a lobster, 2 pounds, add 1 pint of white broth, thyme, bayleaf, and parsley, the juice of a lemon, and 2 tablespoonfuls of cream. Cook for 10 minutes, season it, and press through a fine sieve. Have ready a light omelette, and pour this across it before folding it and around it, when folded, on the dish.
A French lobster sauce poured over and around a rolled omelette. The recipe reads oddly to modern eyes because everything, lobster included, goes through the sieve — the result is a smooth coulis, not a chunky filling.
- The hinge: don't overcook the lobsterLobster meat for a dish like this is already cooked, and ten minutes of simmering in broth will make it stringy. Simmer the broth with the herbs and lemon first, add the meat for two or three minutes only, then sieve.
- White brothA blond stock — veal or chicken bones simmered without browning, so the sauce stays pale. An unsalted light chicken stock is the closest supermarket equivalent; avoid dark or heavily reduced stock, which will muddy the colour.
- Quantities are out of proportionQuantities are ambiguous -- 'the meat of a lobster, 2 pounds' may mean a two-pound lobster, which yields something under half a pound of meat and suits a single omelette; read as two pounds of picked meat it would take several lobsters and is far more than one omelette will carry. For a two- to three-egg omelette serving two, about 8 oz of cooked meat to a cup of broth, with the cream and lemon reduced in step, gives a workable sauce.
- Sieving"Press through a fine sieve" means forcing the cooked meat and liquid through with the back of a ladle to make a thick, smooth sauce. A blender then a fine strainer does it faster. Holding back a little diced meat to fold into the omelette gives texture the original sacrifices.
- Lemon and creamAdd the lemon juice to the broth before the cream, or reduce the acid slightly, since juice stirred into hot cream can split it. Two tablespoons of cream in a pint of broth is a seasoning, not a thickener — expect a pouring sauce.
- HerbsThyme, bay and parsley are most likely intended as a bouquet rather than chopped in; whole sprigs and a bay leaf, lifted out before sieving. The recipe does not specify, and the sieving would in any case hold back stalks and leaves.
- "A light omelette"Probably the plain French omelette: eggs beaten just to combine, cooked fast in butter, still soft in the centre, folded onto the plate and pale yellow rather than browned. 'Light' in books of this period can also mean an omelette lifted with separately beaten whites; the recipe says only 'light' and 'folded'.
- ServingAs written the sauce goes both inside and around the finished omelette. Serve immediately — a filled omelette held even a few minutes weeps and goes flat.
Lobster and eggs was standard restaurant French cooking at the turn of the twentieth century, when a shellfish coulis pressed through a sieve was the ordinary way to get a sauce with body before blenders existed. The "(Paris.)" tag signals a dish the reader is meant to understand as eaten abroad rather than a family formula.