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Omelette Au Thon

A tuna omelette made with carp roe, fresh tuna, shallot, butter, parsley, and chives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Omelette Au Thon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bleach the roes of the carp by boiling them in salted water for 5 minutes.

  2. In a bowl, mix the bleached roes with the chopped tuna and shallot.

Cook and serve

  1. In a saucepan, melt a piece of butter and add the mixture, stirring until well combined.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix another piece of butter with chopped parsley and chives.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a long dish to serve the omelette.

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. Shallot + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Roe + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together243 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Roe + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together442 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Carp roes
Provide the main body and rich, delicate texture of the omelette.
Fresh tuna
Adds savoury, meaty flesh that firms as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the mixture cook gently and taste rounded.
Shallot
Contributes a mild, sweet onion aroma that complements the fish.

The step that matters

Stirring the mixture in the melted butter. Stirring keeps the egg-free fish mixture moving so it cooks evenly without scorching in the butter, and it binds the pieces together into a cohesive omelette.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (roe, egg, shallot, butter, chive):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, egg, shallot, butter, chive. 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.