What a funny name for a dish. "Thermidor" corresponding to a month of the republican calendar (the 11th), one might think that it was created during the revolution… However, this is not the case since the thermidor lobster has existed since the 1890s. It is the great Auguste Escoffier, then chef of the Maire restaurant, located at the corner of the boulevards of Strasbourg and Saint-Denis, who invented it and it was his boss, a certain Paillard, who baptized him "thermidor". This name comes quite simply from an eponymous play by Victorien Sardon played at the Porte Saint-Martin theater and which a few years earlier, in 1891, had caused a scandal to the point of being censored.
The recipe:
Ingredients for 4 people
- 2 lobsters of 900 gr
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 minced shallot
- 50 gr of sliced button mushrooms
- 30 gr of butter
- 15 cl of crème fraîche
- 1 pinch of paprika
- 1 pinch tarragon
- 1 pinch of nutmeg
- 1 tbsp of mustard
- 5 cl of cognac
- 50 gr of parmesan
Boil the lobsters for 5 minutes, split them in half and collect the flesh and coral
Brown the shallot in butter, add the mushrooms then the diced lobster flesh
Add the cognac
Add all the ingredients except the egg yolks and Parmesan
Simmer 5 min / bind off the heat with the egg yolk
Return the preparation to the lobster shells
Sprinkle with Parmesan and brown.