Skip to main content
Main

Cheese Omelet

A baked cheese omelet with bread, pepper, mustard, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dish

  1. Butter the sides of a deep dish.

  2. Layer thin slices of cheese in the dish.

  3. Add a layer of well-buttered bread on top of the cheese.

  4. Sprinkle red pepper and mustard over the bread.

  5. Add another layer of cheese.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolk in a cup of cream and pour it over the dish.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until nicely brown.

  3. Serve hot to avoid toughness.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into the custard, adding richness and a savoury flavour throughout the dish.
Egg yolk
Binds with the cream to set the custard, giving a tender, sliceable texture.
Cream
Provides moisture and fat, keeping the custard soft and rich as it bakes.
Bread
Soaks up the custard and forms a layered base that holds the dish together.

The step that matters

Bake until just set and nicely brown. Egg proteins set as they heat, so overbaking squeezes out moisture and makes the custard tough and grainy. Pull it from the oven once it is set and golden.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cheese, bread, pepper, egg, cream):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cheese, bread, pepper, egg, cream. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes