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Meat or Fish Omelets

A quick omelet made with cold meat or fish, spices, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Meat or Fish Omelets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove all skin and sinew from the cold meat or fish, then cut it small or pound it to a paste.

  2. Mix in spices and coarse sea salt to taste.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat butter in a frying pan over medium heat until melted.

  2. Add the meat mixture and cook until it begins to brown.

  3. Beat the eggs with milk, gravy, water, or white wine if using, then pour over the meat mixture.

  4. Cook until the eggs begin to set, then serve hot, garnished with herbs, pickles, or lemon.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a binding structure that holds the meat together as the omelet cooks.
Cold meat, fish, game, or poultry
Provides the savoury filling and main flavour of the omelet.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the base brown lightly in the pan.

The step that matters

Cooking the eggs until they just begin to set. Eggs turn firm and rubbery when overcooked because the proteins tighten and squeeze out water. Removing the pan heat while the surface is still slightly glossy keeps the omelet tender.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, egg, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, egg, milk. 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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