Name: Meat or Fish Omelets
Ingredients: cold meat, fish, game, or poultry; spices; coarse sea salt; butter; eggs; milk, gravy, water, or white wine (optional); crisp herbs, pickles, or sliced lemon for garnish

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

Remove all skin and sinew from the meat or fish and cut it small or pound it to a paste.
Mix in spices and coarse sea salt to taste.
In a buttered frying pan, cook the mixture over medium heat until it begins to brown.
Pour beaten eggs over the mixture or mix it with the eggs before pouring.
Serve hot, garnished with crisp herbs, pickles, or sliced 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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).