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Tomato Omelet

A tomato-flavored omelet topped with a seasoned tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Tomato Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato sauce

  1. Cook tomatoes until soft, then rub through a colander to puree.

  2. Season the tomato puree with butter, coarse sea salt, pepper, and white sugar.

Make and serve the omelet

  1. Beat eggs and mix in milk.

  2. Cook the egg mixture in a skillet until an omelet forms.

  3. Roll the omelet into two rolls and place them on a platter.

  4. Pour the seasoned tomato sauce over the omelet and serve hot.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Milk + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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, holding it together.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the beaten eggs, keeping the omelet tender.
Tomato
Provides the main flavor and moisture of the sauce poured over the omelet.
White sugar
Sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomato puree.

The step that matters

Cook the egg mixture in a skillet until an omelet forms. Eggs turn from liquid to firm as their proteins set with heat. Cooking too hot or too long makes them tough and dry, while stopping too early leaves the omelet runny and hard to roll.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, butter, pepper, sugar. 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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