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Crayfish Omelet

A savory omelet made with boiled crayfish, butter, flour, spices, and Rhine wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Crayfish Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crayfish

  1. Boil the crayfish in well-salted water for 25 minutes, then drain and cool.

  2. Remove the shells and split the meat from each tail lengthwise, discarding the intestine.

Make the sauce and omelette

  1. Melt the butter and whip it to a cream while slowly melting.

  2. Dust in the flour, cayenne, nutmeg, and Rhine wine, then set aside on low heat.

  3. Add the crayfish tails to the mixture and prepare the omelet.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before folding, add the crayfish, then turn the omelet onto a hot dish.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Crayfish + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a creamy texture, and carries the flavor of the dish.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter mixture so it holds together rather than running thin.
Crayfish
Forms the main filling, giving the omelette its substance and delicate meat.
Rhine wine
Adds acidity and aroma that lighten the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Whipping the butter while it melts. Butter is an emulsion of fat, water and milk solids. Too much heat breaks it into separated oil and solids, so melt it slowly over low heat while whipping to keep the cream smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crayfish, butter, flour, pepper, wine):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crayfish, butter, flour, pepper, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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