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Spanish Omelet

A Spanish omelet with ham, green pepper, mushrooms, tomatoes, and garlic, served with hot tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Spanish Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a skillet, sauté the ham, green pepper, and mushrooms in olive oil until partially cooked.

  2. Add the mashed garlic, tomato meat, salt, and pepper; cook until heated through.

Assemble and serve

  1. Make a plain omelet in a separate pan.

  2. Add the sautéed mixture to the omelet, fold it over, and serve with hot tomato sauce around the edge.

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. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Mushroom + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs (in the method)
Set into the omelet structure that encloses the filling.
Olive oil
Carries heat and adds fat, helping the ham, pepper, and mushrooms soften and brown lightly.
Tomatoes
Provide moisture and acidity that cook down into a savoury sauce for the filling.
Mushrooms
Release moisture as they cook, adding savoury, earthy flavour and softness to the filling.
Green pepper
Adds crisp-tender texture and a fresh, slightly bitter note to the filling.

The step that matters

Sauté the filling until partially cooked. Mushrooms and peppers release water, so cooking them until partly done drives off moisture. This keeps the omelet from turning soggy when the filling is folded in.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, pepper, mushroom, olive, garlic, tomato, meat):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Basilfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, pepper, mushroom, olive, garlic, tomato, meat. 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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