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Bread Omelet

A savory omelet made with crumbled bread, onion, parsley, egg, and fat, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Bread Omelet

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 ↓

Bread Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Soften the hard bread in hot water or milk, or in cold water and crumble it.

  2. In a bowl, combine the softened bread, chopped onion, parsley, egg, salt, and pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat bits of suet or beef fat in a frying pan or square baking pan.

  2. Pour the mixture into the pan, cover, and bake for 5 minutes.

  3. Uncover and brown the top, then cut into pieces and serve with meat or gravy.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard bread
Softened bread forms the body of the omelette and holds the egg mixture together.
Egg
Egg sets when heated, binding the bread and onion into a firm, sliceable mass.
Onion
Chopped onion adds moisture and savory sweetness as it softens during baking.
Suet or beef fat
Melted fat coats the pan, helping the bottom brown and adding rich flavor.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, parsley, egg, pepper, beef):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, parsley, egg, pepper, beef. 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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