Skip to main content
Main

Omelette Au Beurre

A simple omelette cooked in butter with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Omelette Au Beurre

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Crack the eggs into a bowl and add 2 tablespoons of butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Beat the mixture with a fork for 2 minutes.

Cook and fold

  1. Melt the remaining butter in an omelette pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and stir with a fork until the eggs begin to set.

  3. Tilt the pan to gather the eggs on one side and fold them over gently.

  4. Finish folding the omelette into a long shape and slide it onto a plate without deforming 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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + peppertop 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
Set into a soft structure that forms the body of the omelette.
Butter
Adds richness and helps keep the eggs from sticking to the pan.

The step that matters

Stirring until the eggs begin to set, then folding gently. Eggs set quickly over medium heat. Stirring until they just begin to set gives a tender curd, while letting them cook fully makes them tough. Gentle folding keeps the layers intact so the omelette does not tear or deform.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes