Skip to main content
Main

Omelette for One Person

A simple omelette made with eggs, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Omelette for One Person

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs very well in a bowl.

  2. Add salt and pepper to the eggs and mix.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat the butter in an omelette pan until melted.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and keep the pan moving slightly.

  3. Once the egg is set, fold it in half.

  4. Slide the omelette onto a dish and serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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 a tender structure that forms the body of the omelette.
Butter
Coats the pan and adds richness and flavour while keeping the egg from sticking.

The step that matters

Keeping the pan moving while the egg cooks. Moving the pan lets the liquid egg flow to the hot surface so it sets in small, tender curds. Without movement, the bottom can overcook and brown before the top sets.

“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.

More omelette recipes

Cheese 71Ham 64French 61Sweet 59Herb 54Bread 49 See all 137 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes