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To Make a Plain Omelet

A simple omelet made with eggs, salt, pepper, and butter, cooked in a frying pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Make a Plain Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl, omitting the whites of 3.

  2. Beat with salt and pepper until light.

  3. Add 2 ounces of butter, broken into small pieces, and stir into the egg mixture.

  4. Whisk the egg mixture briskly for 1-2 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat the remaining 2 ounces of butter in a frying pan until bubbling.

  2. Pour the whisked mixture into the hot pan.

  3. Stir the omelet gently until it thickens and firms up.

  4. Fold the edges over to form an oval shape.

  5. Cook until browned on one side.

  6. Hold the pan before the fire for 1-2 minutes to brown the top, or use a salamander or hot shovel.

  7. Serve immediately on a hot dish.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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 a tender structure as they cook, forming the body of the omelet.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps keep the omelet from sticking to the pan.

The step that matters

Stir the omelet gently until it thickens and firms up. Gentle stirring lets the egg proteins set in soft curds while the surface stays moist. Vigorous stirring or overcooking makes the eggs tough and dry.

“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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