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Quaker Omelet

A fluffy omelet made with eggs, milk, butter, corn starch, and salt.

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

Quaker Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

  3. Stir the corn starch into the milk until smooth, then add to the beaten yolks along with the salt.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the yolk mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt the butter in the hot pan.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the pan, cover, and cook until browned but not burned, about 7 minutes.

  3. Fold the omelet and transfer it to a hot dish.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites set into a light, airy structure that gives the omelet its lift.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk and yolk mixture so it holds together while cooking.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the custardy mixture.
Butter
Fat in the pan that keeps the omelet from sticking and adds richness and browning.

The step that matters

Folding the whites into the yolk mixture. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites; stirring or overmixing deflates them, leaving a dense omelet instead of a light 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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