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Oyster-Crab Omelet

A savory omelet with oyster crabs, butter, flour, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and crab work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 812 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Oyster-Crab Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the crab sauce

  1. Roll the butter into small balls and dredge with flour.

  2. Place the butter balls in a pan and melt them without browning.

  3. Add hot water and simmer until thick.

  4. Stir in the oyster crabs, salt, and cayenne.

Make and fill the omelet

  1. Beat the eggs thoroughly.

  2. Prepare an omelet.

  3. Add the crab mixture to the omelet.

  4. Fold the omelet.

Serve

  1. Serve.

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. Butter + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Oyster + crabtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Eggs
Set into the structure of the omelet, holding the filling together.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and with the flour forms a thickening base for the sauce.
Flour
Mixed with the melted butter, it thickens the hot water into a smooth sauce.
Oyster crabs
Provide the main seafood flavour and texture of the filling.

The step that matters

Melt the butter without browning. Browning changes the butter's flavour and colour and can scorch the flour, so the roux-style base turns bitter instead of smooth. Gentle heat keeps it pale and lets it thicken the water evenly.

“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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