Skip to main content
Main

Savoury Omelet

A quick fried egg dish flavored with butter, parsley, herbs, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Savoury Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Beat the eggs thoroughly and add pepper, salt, parsley, and herbs.

Cook the omelet

  1. Pour the beaten eggs into the frying pan when the butter begins to sizzle.

  2. Scrape the bottom of the frying pan with a spoon until two-thirds of the mixture is lumpy.

  3. Lift the pan slightly off the heat and fold the omelet in half.

  4. Cook until nearly set, then tilt the pan to finish cooking.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into the structure of the omelet as they cook, giving it body and a tender texture.
Butter
Coats the pan so the eggs release cleanly and adds rich flavor to the omelet.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma and mild flavor to the beaten eggs.

The step that matters

Scrape the bottom of the frying pan until two-thirds of the mixture is lumpy. Scraping moves the still-liquid egg aside so it cooks into soft curds while the rest sets. This gives a tender, evenly cooked omelet rather than a flat, rubbery one.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes