Food and Drink Atlas

How The World Eats
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme
Dish

Lobster Thermidor

Stews, Braises and Sauced Dishes

Lobster Thermidor is a French dish of lobster meat cooked in a rich wine sauce and stuffed back into the lobster shell, finished under a browned crust of cheese, usually Gruyere; the sauce traditionally included egg yolks, brandy such as Cognac, and mustard in powdered form. It takes its name from the January 1891 premiere of the play Thermidor, written by Victorien Sardou, at the Comedie-Francaise theatre, named for the eleventh month of the French Revolutionary calendar and telling the story of a clerk who saved more than 1,200 lives during the Reign of Terror; several of the actors in the play had themselves been among the rescued, inspiring the creation of the dish as a tribute. Its precise origin is disputed, with the Cafe de Paris, Chez Marie and Maison Maire among the Parisian establishments that have claimed to have invented it, most accounts placing its creation between 1891 and 1894. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Classification
Course
Main Course 1
Dietary Suitability
Contains Fish or Shellfish 2
Origin Region
France 1
FAQs

Why is lobster thermidor called Thermidor?

One account says the dish was named after Victorien Sardou's play Thermidor.

Gothamist tells the story that the dish took its name from a play. In its account, Victorien Sardou's play "Thermidor" had its first performance at the Comédie-Française theatre on the evening the dish was launched, and Marie decided to launch his new dish by giving it the name of the play. Other accounts of the dish's origin differ, so this is one telling rather than settled history.
Connections

In Cuisine

Source Lobster Thermidor (Wikipedia)

Uses Ingredient

Egg Yolk, Ingredients
Source Lobster Thermidor (Wikipedia)
Mustard, Ingredients
Source Lobster Thermidor (Wikipedia)
In the Other Atlases

Originated In

Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject originated.

Source Lobster Thermidor (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Lobster Thermidor (Wikidata)
  • P495 (country of origin): France
    France
  • P31 (instance of): Main course
    Main course
View the Source
2. Lobster Thermidor (Wikipedia)
  • Introduction
    The sauce originally contained mustard, typically powdered.
  • Introduction
    Lobster Thermidor is a French dish of lobster meat cooked in a rich wine sauce, stuffed into a lobster shell and browned.
  • Uses Ingredient: Mustard, Infobox main_ingredient field: lobster meat, egg yolks, brandy, mustard
  • Uses Ingredient: Egg Yolk, Infobox main_ingredient field: lobster meat, egg yolks, brandy, mustard
  • In Cuisine: French Cuisine, lead paragraph
    Lobster Thermidor is a French dish of lobster meat cooked in a rich wine sauce, stuffed into a lobster shell and browned.
View the Source
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.