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Omelet with Onions and Ham

A quick omelette made with eggs, butter, onions, and diced ham, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Omelet with Onions and Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs with salt and pepper.

  2. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

  3. Add the chopped onion and sauté until soft.

  4. Stir in the diced ham and cook for another minute.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the beaten eggs into the skillet and cook until set, folding the omelet in half before serving.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

  4. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 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
Set into a structure that holds the filling together as the omelette cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps prevent the eggs from sticking to the skillet.
Onion
Sweetens and adds savoury depth as it softens in the pan.
Cooked ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour and a chewy texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the eggs until set. Eggs cook quickly over direct heat, so cooking them too hard makes them tough and rubbery. Cooking gently until just set keeps the omelette tender and moist.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, ham, pepper. 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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