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How to Make an Omelette

A simple egg omelette cooked with butter, parsley, salt, and optional cheese, tomatoes, or onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

How to Make an Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat a frying pan over medium heat and add the butter.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs with parsley and salt until just combined.

Cook and serve

  1. Once the butter is melted, pour the egg mixture into the pan.

  2. As it cooks, lift the edges with a knife and push them towards the center.

  3. When the omelette is set, fold it and serve immediately.

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. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + tomatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a tender structure as they cook, forming the body of the omelette.
Butter
Coats the pan so the eggs release cleanly and add richness to the flavour.

The step that matters

Lifting the edges and pushing the egg toward the center. Egg proteins set as they heat, so moving the liquid edges inward lets uncooked egg flow onto the hot pan and form small curds. This keeps the omelette tender and even rather than rubbery or browned at the edges.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, parsley, cheese, onion):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, parsley, cheese, onion. 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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