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Crab Omelet

A savory omelet made with boiled crab, cream, eggs, butter, flour, salt, cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Crab Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl and beat for about 10 strokes.

  2. Add 2 teaspoons of cream, salt, and cayenne pepper to the eggs.

  3. In a saucepan, boil and thicken the remaining cream with flour and butter, then add the crabs.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a buttered skillet over medium heat and pour in the egg mixture.

  2. When the eggs are partially cooked, add the crab mixture and fold the omelet.

  3. Serve on a hot platter.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  3. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together922 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 as they cook, holding the filling together.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, and thickens with flour to make a silky crab sauce.
Picked boiled crabs
Provide the main filling, adding sweet meat and texture to the omelet.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a sauce that keeps the crab filling moist.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps the skillet keep the eggs from sticking.

The step that matters

When the eggs are partially cooked, add the crab mixture and fold the omelet.. Adding the filling too early or too late changes the result. If the eggs are still runny, the omelet will not hold its fold; if they are fully set, they become dry and tough. Eggs set by heat, so timing the fold while they are still slightly moist keeps the omelet tender.

“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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