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Plain Omelette

A simple omelette made with eggs, salt, pepper, bacon fat or butter, and hot water.

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 Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs until very light.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and hot water to the eggs.

Cook

  1. Heat the omelette pan and add bacon fat or butter.

  2. Cook slowly until thickened and browned underneath.

  3. Place in the oven to finish cooking the top.

  4. When the top does not stick to your finger, the omelette is done.

Serve

  1. Fold the omelette and serve on a hot platter.

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 protein that sets into the omelette's structure as it cooks.
Bacon fat or butter
Adds fat for flavor and helps keep the omelette from sticking and encourages browning.
Hot water
Adds moisture that turns to steam, keeping the omelette more tender.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until thickened and browned underneath. Gentle heat lets the egg proteins set evenly without tightening and toughening. Too much heat sets the bottom quickly, leaving the top raw or the underside scorched.

“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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