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Omelet, Plain

A simple egg omelet cooked in butter with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg 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 ↓

Omelet, Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Beat the eggs until frothy, then add salt and pepper.

Cook the omelet

  1. Pour the eggs into the frying pan when the butter begins to frizzle.

  2. Scrape the bottom of the pan with a tablespoon until the mixture is mostly lumpy and some liquid remains.

  3. Lift the pan from the heat to reduce the temperature.

  4. Push the omelet into a semicircle shape in the pan.

  5. Hold the pan at an angle in front of the heat until the omelet is fully set.

Serve

  1. Slide the omelet onto a hot dish using an egg slice and serve.

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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + peppertop 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
Coats the pan and adds richness and flavor while keeping the eggs from sticking.

The step that matters

Lift the pan from the heat to reduce the temperature. Eggs proteins set quickly at high heat and turn tough or browned. Lifting the pan lowers the heat so the omelet cooks gently and stays tender.

“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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