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Plain Omelet

A lightly beaten egg omelet cooked in butter, optionally flavored with herbs or meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Plain Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

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

  2. Add pepper and salt to taste.

  3. Mix in the small pieces of fresh butter.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat ¼ pound of butter in a frying pan over medium heat until boiling.

  2. Pour in the beaten egg and fry gently until the underside is light brown.

  3. Do not turn the omelet while cooking.

  4. To brown the top, hold a hot shovel over it.

  5. When done, fold the omelet in half and place it on a dish.

  6. Garnish with sprigs of curled 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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a delicate structure that forms the body of the omelet.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps keep the omelet from sticking to the pan.

The step that matters

Do not turn the omelet while cooking. Eggs set from the bottom up. Turning or stirring breaks the forming curds and can tear the delicate layer, so the omelet stays tender and intact when browned underneath and folded.

“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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