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Tomato Omelet

A quick tomato omelet made with eggs, tomatoes, onion, parsley, flour, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Cook the tomatoes for 5 minutes.

  2. Add butter, flour, parsley, salt, and onion to the cooked tomatoes.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

Cook the omelet

  1. Mix the cooled mixture with the beaten eggs.

  2. Fry the mixture in hot butter.

  3. Fold the omelet.

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. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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 when cooked, giving the omelet its structure and body.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and a light acidity that brightens the filling.
Flour
Thickens the tomato mixture so it holds together rather than running.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the omelet brown lightly in the pan.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool. Adding a hot tomato mixture to beaten eggs can start cooking them unevenly and make them curdle or scramble. Cooling it first keeps the eggs smooth and lets them set evenly in the pan.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, onion, flour, butter, parsley. 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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