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Crab Omelette

A light omelette mixed with crab meat, parsley, shallot, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Prepare the filling

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl and season with salt, pepper, chopped parsley, and chopped shallot.

  2. Beat the mixture well with a whisk.

  3. Shred the crab meat and mix it with the eggs.

Cook

  1. Fry the mixture in butter until cooked.

  2. Alternatively, make the omelette and place the shredded crab inside instead of folding it.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

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

  4. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into the structure of the omelette as they cook, holding the crab and herbs together.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the surface while the eggs cook in the pan.
Crab meat
Supplies the main flavour and tender, sweet texture in the filling.
Chopped shallot
Adds a mild, aromatic onion-like sharpness that balances the rich eggs.

The step that matters

Fry the mixture in butter until cooked. Eggs go from silky to rubbery quickly under high heat, so cook gently until just set to keep the omelette tender.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Shallotthe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

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

“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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