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Puff Omelette

A light, folded omelette made with egg yolks, sweet milk, butter, flour, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Puff Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Pour in the sweet milk and add salt.

  3. In another bowl, mix the butter and flour until smooth, then add to the egg mixture and beat well.

Cook the omelette

  1. Grease a frying pan and pour in the mixture.

  2. When it begins to thicken, fold in the beaten egg whites and add another pinch of salt.

  3. Cook until set and lightly browned.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and add richness and color to the omelette.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in, they trap air and create the puffed, airy texture.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and softness to the batter.
Flour
Thickens the batter slightly so it holds its structure while cooking.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and helps the omelette brown lightly in the pan.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites when the batter begins to thicken. Egg whites must be beaten to stiff foam and folded gently so the air is kept; deflating them or folding too late in the batter results in a flat, dense omelette rather than a puffed 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.

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