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Omelette with Oyster Crabs
Crack eight fresh eggs in a bowl, add half gill milk, half teaspoon each salt and chopped parsley and two saltspoons white pepper. Sharply beat up with a fork for two minutes. Wash and drain on cloth a half pint very fresh oyster crabs. Thoroughly heat two tablespoons melted butter in a black frying pan, drop in crabs and fry for five minutes, tossing them meanwhile. Sprinkle with three saltspoons salt, drop in the eggs, thoroughly mix with fork for two minutes, let rest for a half minute; fold up opposite sides to meet in centre, let rest for a minute, turn on a hot dish and serve.
A straightforward French-style rolled omelette, distinguished entirely by its filling. The difficulty today is sourcing, not technique.
- Oyster crabsThese are pea crabs (Pinnotheres ostreum), soft, translucent little crabs that live inside living oysters. They are eaten whole, shell and all. They are not sold commercially in any regular way now; the only reliable source is shucking a large quantity of wild East Coast oysters yourself and saving what you find. Half a pint is a great many crabs, and would have accumulated only as a shucker's by-catch from a large volume of oysters.
- If you cannot find themTiny cooked bay shrimp or crawfish tails give the sweetness but not the crisp, faintly briny crunch that was the whole point. Treat the substitution honestly rather than expecting the same dish.
- Half gill of milkA gill is half a cup, so this is 1/4 cup — a generous but not excessive amount for eight eggs.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon. Two saltspoons of white pepper is 1/2 teaspoon; the three saltspoons of salt sprinkled over the crabs is 3/4 teaspoon, on top of the 1/2 teaspoon already in the eggs. That is a firmly seasoned omelette by modern standards — consider halving the salt over the crabs, particularly as the crabs themselves are salty.
- "A black frying pan"Cast iron or well-seasoned carbon steel, the standard omelette pan of the period. A 10- to 12-inch pan is right for eight eggs. Nonstick works but browns less.
- Five minutes for the crabsWatch them rather than the clock. They are the size of a fingernail and go from tender to leathery quickly; two to three minutes over brisk heat, tossing, is usually enough to firm and lightly crisp them.
- The hinge"Thoroughly mix with fork for two minutes, let rest for a half minute" is the classic French method: stir constantly to build small curds, then stop and let the base set into a skin that will hold the fold. Do not stir after the resting begins, and do not let the pan run past medium heat or the underside colours before the centre sets.
- YieldEight eggs makes one large omelette serving three to four as a lunch or supper dish. Serve immediately on a warmed plate; it will not hold.
Oyster crabs were one of the small luxuries of American restaurant cooking between roughly 1880 and the First World War — a delicacy that could not be farmed, ordered, or scaled, since they arrived only as an accident of shucking oysters. New York houses in particular built dishes around them: fried in deep fat and heaped on a napkin, folded into a cream sauce, or, as here, into an omelette. Their appearance in The International Cook Book reflects its author's background in the Delmonico's kitchens, where a by-product a fisherman would discard became a menu item priced accordingly. The decline of the wild Atlantic oyster fishery through the twentieth century took the crabs with it, which is why a recipe casually calling for half a pint of them now reads as more extravagant than any dish of truffles in the same book.