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Omelets

A simple egg dish cooked in butter, optionally folded with ham, mushrooms, lobster, or chicken.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Omelets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the omelette

  1. Beat the eggs lightly.

  2. Stir in the milk and salt.

  3. Heat an omelet pan and add the butter.

  4. Once melted, pour in the beaten eggs.

  5. Shake the pan and cook until light brown.

  6. Fold the omelet and serve on a hot dish.

Variations

  1. For variations, add chopped ham, mushrooms, lobster, or chicken between the folds.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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, forming its body.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the beaten eggs, keeping the omelette tender.
Butter
Fat that coats the pan, prevents sticking, and adds richness and browning.

The step that matters

Shake the pan and cook until light brown. Eggs set quickly over high heat, so moving the pan keeps the surface from overcooking while the centre stays tender. Browning the surface too far makes the omelette tough and dry.

“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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