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Crab Meat Omelet
This is an adaptation of a Puffy Omelet. Fry two minced onions in two tablespoonfuls of Snowdrift until tender. Then add a cupful of flaked crab meat, a fourth teaspoonful of paprika, a half teaspoonful of celery salt and a half teaspoonful of salt. Make up once the recipe for a Puffy Omelet, spread this crab meat mixture over it, cut at right angles to the handle, fold and serve with, or without, Cream or White Sauce No. 2.
A filled soufflé omelet from a shortening-company cookbook, written on the assumption that the reader has already turned to the Puffy Omelet and White Sauce pages. Two of those cross-references matter more than anything in the paragraph itself.
- SnowdriftA cottonseed-oil shortening sold by the Southern Cotton Oil Company, and the reason the book exists. Two tablespoons of butter or a neutral oil does the same job here and tastes better with crab.
- Puffy omelet, since it is not on this pageThe book's version is not given here, so as a modern stand-in: separate four to six eggs, beat the yolks with a little water or milk and seasoning, whip the whites to soft peaks and fold them in. Cook in a buttered oven-safe skillet over low heat until the bottom sets, then finish in a moderate oven (about 325-350F) for 12-15 minutes until the top springs back.
- Cut at right angles to the handleThis is the hinge. A puffy omelet is stiff and cracks apart when folded, so you score it lightly across the middle, perpendicular to the pan handle, before folding one half over the filling.
- Crab meatA cupful of flaked crab in a book of this period would most often have been canned, drained. Pasteurized refrigerated lump or claw meat is the modern equivalent; pick it over for shell and cartilage, and fold it into the onions off the heat so it warms rather than shreds.
- SaltHalf a teaspoon of salt plus half a teaspoon of celery salt is a good deal for a cupful of crab. Taste the filling before you commit, as much crab meat sold now is already salted.
- White Sauce No. 2Not given on this page; in books of the period the numbered sauces run thin to thick, and a 'No. 2' is usually the medium one, around two tablespoons fat, two tablespoons flour and one cup milk, cooked out and seasoned. It is optional here, and a squeeze of lemon in it suits the crab.
- YieldDepending on the size of the Puffy Omelet used, roughly two generous servings or three as a light course. Puffy omelets deflate within a few minutes of leaving the oven, so plate them immediately.
A New Snowdrift Cook Book belongs to a genre that flourished in the early twentieth century: the branded cookbook, published by a manufacturer to teach cooks how to use an unfamiliar product. Snowdrift was a cottonseed-oil shortening, and cottonseed oil had gone in a few decades from a waste product of the Southern cotton crop to a cheap rival of lard and butter, which meant every recipe in the book quietly demonstrates that the new fat could fry, cream and bake like the old ones. The dish itself is a French soufflé omelet dressed in American convenience goods. Canned crab meat, celery salt and paprika were all fashionable pantry items of the era, and celery salt in particular turns up constantly in seafood cookery of the period, an association with crab that survives in the seasoning blends still sold around the Chesapeake.