Skip to main content
Main

Plain Omelet

A simple omelet made with eggs, parsley, pepper, salt, and butter, cooked in a frying pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Plain Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs with minced parsley, pepper, and salt.

  2. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

Cook the omelet

  1. Pour the egg mixture into the pan.

  2. Stir the omelet gently with a spoon until it begins to set.

  3. Stop stirring and shake the pan for about a minute.

  4. Use a long knife to fold the omelet in half.

  5. Continue shaking the pan until the underside is golden.

Serve

  1. Turn the omelet onto a hot dish 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Proteins set as they heat, forming the tender structure of the omelet.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps the underside brown gently in the pan.

The step that matters

Stop stirring and shake the pan. Once the egg begins to set, continued stirring breaks up the forming curds and makes the omelet tough and scrambled. Letting the base set undisturbed gives a smooth, tender layer that browns evenly.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes