Skip to main content
Main

Meat or Fish Omelets

A savory omelette made with diced or ground meat or fish, seasoned, and cooked with eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Meat or Fish Omelets

4 large eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the meat or fish into small pieces or pound it into a paste, then mix in spices and salt to taste.

Cook the omelette

  1. Heat butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the meat mixture and cook until it begins to brown.

  3. Beat the eggs and pour them over the meat mixture, or mix them together.

  4. Cook until the eggs are set, then serve hot.

  5. Garnish with herbs, pickles, or lemon if desired.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the filling and set into a tender, custard-like omelette structure when cooked.
Butter
Fats the pan for frying and adds richness and light browning to the omelette.
Cold meat, fish, game, or poultry
Provides the main savoury filling and flavour, browning slightly in the pan.

The step that matters

Cook until the eggs are set. Eggs go from liquid to set over a narrow range of heat. Cooking gently over medium heat keeps the omelette tender and prevents rubbery, dry eggs.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, egg, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, egg, 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipes