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Omelette Aux Fines Herbes

A French omelette flavored with parsley, onion, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Omelette Aux Fines Herbes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl and add salt, pepper, parsley, and onion.

  2. Beat the mixture well.

  3. Melt the butter in a clean, dry frying pan over medium heat.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the egg mixture into the hot butter and stir quickly with a spoon until lightly set.

  2. Tilt the pan to let the omelette slide to the edge, forming an oval shape.

  3. Let the omelette set for a minute.

  4. Turn the omelette onto a hot dish and serve.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 omelette as they cook, holding it together.
Butter
Adds richness and prevents the eggs from sticking to the pan.
Onion
Adds mild aroma and savory flavor to the eggs.

The step that matters

Stir quickly until lightly set. Stirring the eggs in hot butter keeps curds small and tender. Stopping while the eggs are still slightly glossy lets residual heat finish the set without making them dry or rubbery.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, parsley, 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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