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Orange Omelet

An omelet flavored with orange zest and slices, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Orange Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Grate the rind of one orange into one tablespoon of sugar.

  2. Pare and slice the other orange thinly.

  3. Sprinkle the sliced orange with two tablespoons of sugar.

Make the omelet

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add the sugar and orange rind, salt, beaten yolks, and two tablespoons of orange juice to the whites.

  3. Melt butter in a hot omelet pan.

  4. Pour the egg mixture into the pan.

  5. When the mixture begins to thicken, spread the sliced oranges (without juice) over the top.

  6. Fold the omelet from the side of the pan over the sliced oranges.

  7. Turn the folded omelet onto a hot dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the dish in a 400°F (200°C) oven for two minutes.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Orange + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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
Whipped whites trap air for lift, and the yolks set the mixture into a tender omelet.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the orange.
Oranges
Rind and juice add aroma and acidity, and the slices add fruit flavor on top.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the omelet brown and release from the hot pan.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Stiff whites hold air that gives the omelet its lift. Underbeaten whites produce a dense, flat omelet, while overbeaten whites turn dry and grainy and collapse when mixed with the yolks.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, 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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