Skip to main content
Main

Omelet Aux Confitures

A light omelet folded over jam and baked until puffed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Omelet Aux Confitures

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Separate the egg yolks and whites, beating the whites until very stiff.

  3. Mix the sugar, lemon peel, and milk into the yolks.

  4. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the yolk mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a baking dish and spread the marmalade or jam in the bottom.

  2. Pour the omelet mixture over the marmalade.

  3. Bake for about 8 minutes until puffed and lightly crusted.

  4. Serve immediately in the baking dish to prevent it from falling.

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 + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Whites trap air when beaten, giving the omelet its light, puffed structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the egg mixture brown lightly in the oven.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and softness to the yolk mixture, keeping the omelet tender.
Marmalade or jam
Provides fruity sweetness and moisture in the base beneath the omelet.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg whites gently into the yolk mixture. Beaten whites hold air bubbles that make the omelet rise. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, so the omelet bakes flat and dense instead of puffed.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk. 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.

You might also like