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Cheese Omelet

A baked cheese omelet with bread, pepper, mustard, egg yolk, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dish

  1. Butter the sides of a deep dish and layer with thin slices of cheese.

  2. Add a layer of well-buttered bread, sprinkling with red pepper and mustard.

  3. Top with another layer of cheese.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolk with the cream and pour over the dish.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until nicely browned.

  3. Serve hot to avoid toughness.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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
The yolk, beaten with cream, sets during baking to bind the layers into a custard.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the egg mixture, keeping the custard soft as it sets.
Cheese
Melts between the bread layers and browns on top, adding richness and savory flavor.
Bread
Soaks up the egg and cream mixture, giving the dish body and structure.

The step that matters

Pour the egg mixture and bake until just set. Egg proteins set with heat, and overbaking squeezes out moisture and makes the custard tough and rubbery. Serving hot, as the record advises, keeps the texture tender.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cheese, bread, pepper, egg, cream. 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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