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Omelette Aux Pines Herbes

An omelette made with eggs, butter, flour, milk, salt, cayenne, herbs, and onion shreds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Omelette Aux Pines Herbes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Make a thin cream by mixing the flour and milk.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix them with the flour mixture, salt, and cayenne.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a small frying pan over high heat.

  2. Pour the batter into the hot pan and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Sprinkle chopped herbs and onion shreds on top of the omelet.

  4. Carefully fold the omelet in half and slide it onto 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. Butter + milktop 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Set to form the body of the omelette as they cook.
Butter
Fat that coats the pan, prevents sticking, and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a thin cream that gives the batter body.
Milk
Adds moisture so the omelette stays tender rather than dry.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into the hot pan and cook for a few minutes. The pan must be hot enough to set the egg quickly on contact. If it is too cool, the omelette absorbs butter and cooks slowly and toughly; if it is too hot, the underside browns before the top sets.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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