Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Crabs a LA Newburgh

A dish of oyster crabs served on toast with white sauce, sherry, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Oyster and crab work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 95 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Oyster Crabs a LA Newburgh

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare white sauce and pour 2 cups into a chafing dish over hot water.

  2. Add 1½ cups of prepared oyster crabs.

Finish and serve

  1. To make à la Newburgh, stir in 3 tablespoons of sherry and 1 beaten egg yolk.

  2. Serve on Graham or white bread toast.

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

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

  2. Sauce + crabtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Crab + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together67 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce and adds richness when stirred in.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a touch of acidity that brightens the rich sauce.
White sauce
Forms the creamy base that coats the oyster crabs.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when heated, but if the sauce is too hot or boils after it goes in, the yolk can curdle and turn grainy. Keep the sauce warm over hot water rather than boiling, and stir steadily as the yolk is added.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes