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Omelette with Gravy

A fried egg mixture with parsley, onions, and gravy, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Omelette with Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Whisk the eggs thoroughly in a bowl.

  2. Mix in salt, pepper, parsley, onions, and gravy.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt butter in a hot frying pan over gentle heat.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and fry until set, about 6-7 minutes.

  3. Serve on a hot dish with additional gravy poured around 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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a soft structure that forms the body of the omelette.
Butter
Fats the pan so the omelette releases cleanly and browns lightly.
Seasoned gravy
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the egg mixture and the finished dish.

The step that matters

Frying the egg mixture until set. Egg proteins coagulate as they heat, so cooking until just set keeps the omelette tender. Overcooking on a gentle heat, or leaving it too long, makes it dry and rubbery.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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