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Eggs with Cheese

A quick cheese omelet cooked in butter and served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Eggs with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the omelet

  1. Heat a small omelet pan and add butter or drippings.

  2. When melted, add the milk.

  3. Slip in the eggs one at a time and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  4. When the whites are nearly firm, sprinkle with cheese.

Finish and serve

  1. Finish cooking and serve on buttered toast.

  2. Pour sauce from the pan over the eggs.

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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + cheesetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

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

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 omelet as the proteins coagulate with heat.
Milk
Adds moisture and makes the eggs more tender and creamy as they cook.
Butter or drippings
Adds fat for richness and flavor and keeps the eggs from sticking to the pan.
Grated cheese
Melts into the eggs, adding savory flavor and richness.

The step that matters

Sprinkle the cheese when the whites are nearly firm. Egg proteins set quickly with heat, and overcooking makes them tough and rubbery. Adding the cheese at this point lets it melt while the eggs stay tender and moist.

“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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