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Cheese Omelet

A quick omelet made with eggs, cheese, milk, salt, cayenne, butter, served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cheese Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pan, combine the beaten eggs, grated cheese, milk, salt, and cayenne.

  2. Stir the mixture until cooked through.

  3. Add the walnut-sized piece of butter and let it melt.

  4. Pour the omelet over buttered toast and serve hot.

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. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cheese + walnuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together410 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into the structure of the omelet as they cook.
Grated cheese
Adds richness and flavor, and melts into the eggs.
Milk
Adds moisture, keeping the eggs tender rather than dry.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and helps prevent sticking.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture until cooked through. Eggs turn from liquid to solid over a narrow range of heat. Cooking too long or too hot makes them tough and dry, while stopping too early leaves them runny.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Almondfits less well
  4. Peasfits less well

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