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Bacon or Ham Omelet

A quick omelet made with eggs, flour, milk, pepper, salt, and diced bacon or ham.

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 ↓

Bacon or Ham Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Mix the flour with the milk or water, then add to the eggs along with pepper and salt.

  3. Mince the bacon or ham and stir it into the egg mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt butter or fat in an omelet pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and shake it gently while cooking.

  3. After 3-4 minutes, fold the sides of the omelet over 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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 into the structure of the omelet as they cook, holding the filling together.
Flour
Thickens the egg mixture slightly, giving a more tender, less watery texture.
Milk or water
Adds moisture, keeping the omelet soft rather than dry.
Boiled bacon or ham
Adds savoury flavour and salt-cured richness to the eggs.

The step that matters

Shake the pan gently while the eggs cook. Gentle shaking keeps the egg mixture moving so it sets in soft, even layers rather than sticking or browning unevenly on the base.

“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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