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Spanish Omelet

A skillet omelet with onions, apple, olives, peppers, tomatoes, and flour, served with a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 sauce

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onions, sliced apple, and chopped olives; fry until light brown.

  3. Stir in the chopped green peppers and cook for a few minutes.

  4. Add the tomatoes and season to taste.

  5. Thicken the mixture with flour, stirring well.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce between the folds and over the omelet made with the eggs.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Form the omelet, setting into the structure that holds the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the tomato mixture so the sauce clings instead of running.
Onions
Build sweetness and savoury depth as they brown in the butter.
Tomatoes
Provide the liquid and acidity that form the base of the sauce.
Green peppers
Add a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable note to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour, stirring well. Flour added to hot liquid clumps if not stirred constantly. Stirring while it is added spreads the starch evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly rather than lumpy.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, olive, pepper, tomato, flour, egg. 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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