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Omelette Fourree Aux Huitres

A French omelette stuffed with oysters and a buttery oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Omelette Fourree Aux Huitres

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Open the oysters carefully, saving all their liquid.

  2. Put the oyster liquid and oysters in a small saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the butter and flour to a smooth paste, moisten with the oyster liquid, and add milk to make ½ pint.

  2. Stir over heat until boiling, then add more butter and remove from heat.

  3. Cut the oysters in half and warm them in a bain-marie.

Make and serve the omelette

  1. Make an omelette with the eggs, then spread the oyster mixture over it.

  2. Fold the omelette and 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Oysters
Provide the main filling and the briny, savoury flavour of the dish.
Eggs
Set into the structure of the omelette that holds the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the oyster liquid and milk into a smooth sauce.
Oyster liquid
Adds concentrated sea flavour and moisture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce over heat until boiling. Flour must be heated until boiling for its starch granules to swell and thicken the liquid fully. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and possibly tasting of raw flour.

“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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