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Omelet

A cooked egg dish with flour, milk, onion, ham, parsley, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Mix the flour into the milk.

  3. Add the chopped onion, ham, parsley, salt, and pepper to the egg mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan until hot.

  2. Pour in the egg mixture, stirring constantly until it begins to thicken.

  3. Let it cook undisturbed for 3 minutes to brown.

  4. Fold the omelet in half and slide it onto a dish.

  5. Serve immediately while 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, holding the filling together.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture, giving the omelet a softer, more stable body.
Milk
Adds moisture and tenderness, keeping the eggs from becoming dry and tough.
Butter
Fat in the pan that prevents sticking and promotes gentle browning of the surface.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture as it hits the pan. Stirring while the eggs begin to set keeps curds small and tender. Leaving them completely still too early can make the base tough and uneven before it is folded.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, milk, ham, parsley, pepper, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, milk, ham, parsley, pepper, 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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