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Spanish Omelet

A savory omelet with olives, onions, green peppers, tomatoes, capers, mushrooms, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Spanish Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Heat the butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Add the onions, olives, and green peppers; cook for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the tomatoes and cook until the moisture has nearly evaporated.

  4. Add the capers, salt, cayenne, and mushrooms; mix well.

Cook the omelet

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and pour them into the skillet.

  2. Once the eggs begin to set, place a spoonful of the sauce in the center.

  3. Fold the omelet over and pour the remaining sauce over and around it.

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. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Olive + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

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

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set when heated, forming the structure that holds the omelet together.
Tomatoes
Release moisture and acidity that flavor the sauce as they cook down.
Green peppers
Soften during cooking and add a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavor.
Olives
Add salty, briny flavor and richness to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor for cooking the vegetables and browning the skillet.

The step that matters

Cooking the tomatoes until the moisture has nearly evaporated. If the tomato sauce stays wet, it will thin the filling and make the omelet soggy and hard to fold. Reducing it concentrates flavor and gives a thicker sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, olive, pepper, capers, tomato, egg, mushroom):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, olive, pepper, capers, tomato, egg, mushroom. 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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