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Cheese Omelette

A quick egg dish with grated cracker and cheese, cooked in butter and optionally seasoned with thyme and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cheese Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Beat the eggs until thick and frothy.

  2. Mix in the grated cracker and grated cheese.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and cook until set.

  3. If desired, add chopped thyme and parsley before serving.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + thymetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + thymetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,758 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the structure that sets the omelette once cooked.
Grated cracker
Adds body and absorbs some moisture from the beaten eggs.
Grated cheese
Adds richness and flavour, and melts into the set eggs.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg mixture until set. Over-high heat or overcooking toughens egg proteins and makes the omelette rubbery and dry, so cook gently until just set.

Swap the thyme

The recipe marks thyme as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cheese, butter, parsley):

  1. Thymethe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

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