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Plain Omelet

A simple egg omelet with milk and flour, cooked in butter.

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 ↓

Plain Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the flour with a little milk until smooth.

  2. Fill the cup with milk until half full.

  3. Combine the flour mixture and eggs, mixing just enough to break the yolks.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a hot, well-buttered frying pan and cover it.

  2. When it starts to cook, roll it over like a jelly roll.

  3. Once cooked, turn it out onto a hot platter with minimal handling.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Set into the structure of the omelet as they cook, giving it body and a tender bite.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, so the cooked eggs stay tender rather than dry.
Flour
Thickens the mixture slightly, helping the omelet hold together when rolled.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the omelet from sticking and gives it a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Pour into a hot, well-buttered pan. Hot fat sets the egg quickly on contact, so the omelet forms a skin that releases cleanly. A cool or under-buttered pan lets the egg stick and cook unevenly.

“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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