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Savoury Omelets

A quick egg dish cooked in butter and served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Savoury Omelets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl, add salt and pepper, and beat with a fork for a few minutes.

Cook the omelet

  1. Heat an omelet pan and add the butter.

  2. When the butter is steaming, pour in the eggs.

  3. Make small incisions with a fork to allow heat to reach the eggs evenly.

  4. Run a knife around the edge of the pan to prevent sticking.

  5. Fold one half of the omelet over the other when it begins to firm up.

Serve

  1. Shake the omelet onto a hot dish and pour the tomato sauce over 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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 the soft, tender structure of the omelet as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps keep the eggs from sticking to the pan.

The step that matters

Make small incisions with a fork. Eggs set quickly on contact with a hot pan, so the centre can stay runny while the edges overcook. Small cuts let heat reach the middle and cook the eggs more evenly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, butter, sauce. 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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