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Omelet Souffle

A light, airy omelet made with eggs, lemon, nutmeg, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Omelet Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs until light.

  2. Add lemon juice, grated peel, nutmeg, and sugar; mix well.

  3. Gently fold in the cream.

  4. Butter the omelet pan and heat it.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour in the mixture and lightly stir in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Cook for 5 to 6 minutes in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  3. Turn the omelet onto a hot plate and serve immediately.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites trapped with air provide the lift and airy structure that makes the omelet puff.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the interior tender rather than dry.
Sugar
Adds gentle sweetness and helps the surface brown lightly in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Lightly stir in the beaten egg whites. Beaten whites hold air bubbles that expand in the oven and lift the omelet. Stirring too hard knocks out that air, so the omelet will be dense and may fall flat.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, nutmeg, sugar, cream, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, nutmeg, sugar, cream, butter. 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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