The famous, and amongst chefs and gourmets, legendary, French chef, culinary writer and restaurateur Auguste Escoffier, who updated and made popular traditional French cooking methods and elevated cooking to a respected profession, created Lobster Thermidor around 1880 at a restaurant called Maison Maire in Paris, which was near the Comédie Française, a theatre. The dish was apparently named to honour Victorien Sardou's play Thermidor, which opened at the theatre in January 1891. The play, which takes its name from the month in the French Republican Calendar, celebrates the Thermidorian Reaction which resulted in the overthrow and execution of Robespierre and the end of the Reign of Terror.
This is, as the name suggests, a lobster dish, in which cooked lobster meat, together with brandy (often cognac), and egg yolks are stuffed inside a lobster shell, and which may be served with a crust made from oven-browned cheese, commonly Gruyère. Mustard must be used in the sauce. The dish is quite expensive and time consuming to make and, given that lobster by itself tends to be quite an expensive item of seafood, is generally only served on special occasions. This was by no means the only dish still cooked today that was created by Escoffier; two of the most famous are still Peach Melba and Melba Toast, both named after Dame Nellie Melba, the Australian singer.
A more modern, and very similar, dish in its ingredients, cooking and serving, is the American Lobster Newberg.
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