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Plain Omelet

A simple omelet made with eggs, water, butter, salt, and pepper, cooked in a pan and folded.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Plain Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Break all the eggs into a bowl and stir gently to combine the yolks and whites.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of cold water, salt, and pepper to taste.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat 2 ounces of butter in a pan until very hot.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the pan.

  3. Cook until the bottom is set, then quickly flip to cook the other side.

  4. Fold the omelet in half and serve on a very hot plate.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the structure that sets into the omelet as the proteins coagulate when heated.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps keep the eggs from sticking to the pan.
Cold water
Adds a little moisture that yields a more tender, less dense omelet.

The step that matters

Cook until the bottom is set, then flip. Egg proteins set quickly over high heat, so flipping too late can overcook and toughen the omelet, while flipping too early leaves it runny and tears it.

“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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