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Omelets, of Different Fashions

A simple omelette made with eggs, pepper, salt, and butter, folded like a turnover and served with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Omelets, of Different Fashions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Beat the eggs very light and strain through a sieve.

  2. Add pepper and salt to taste.

Cook

  1. Divide 2 ounces of butter into small pieces and place in a frying pan.

  2. Heat ½ cup of butter in the frying pan over medium heat until it boils.

  3. Pour in the eggs and fry gently until the underside is light brown.

  4. Transfer the omelet to a dish and fold it over like a turnover.

  5. Serve with parsley.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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
Provide the structure that sets into the omelette's body when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and carries heat into the eggs, helping the underside brown.

The step that matters

Fry the eggs gently. High heat sets the eggs quickly, toughening them and over-browning the underside before the centre is set. Gentle heat keeps the omelette tender.

“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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