Name: Crab Omelette
Ingredients: eggs; coarse sea salt; black pepper; chopped parsley; small piece of chopped shallot; shredded crab; butter

Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Crab Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

Break the eggs into a bowl and season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, chopped parsley, and chopped shallot.
Beat the mixture well with a whisk.
Mix the shredded crab into the egg mixture.
Fry in butter until cooked through.
Alternatively, make the omelette first and add the shredded crab inside before serving.

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.

Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together812 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,898 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, parsley, crab, butter):

Capsicumfits about as well
Chivefits about as well
Spinachfits about as well
Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, parsley, crab, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.