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Excelsior Omelet

A lightly cooked egg mixture with milk, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Excelsior Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs together until well mixed.

  2. Stir in the milk until combined.

Cook

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered skillet over medium heat.

  2. Using a spoon, gently toss the eggs from the bottom as they set.

  3. When there is no liquid left, quickly turn the omelet onto a warm dish.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with salt, butter, and pepper on the side.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into the soft structure of the omelet as their proteins coagulate with heat.
Milk
Adds moisture and tenderness, keeping the set eggs softer and less dense.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps keep the omelet from sticking to the skillet.

The step that matters

Turn the omelet out as soon as no liquid remains. As egg proteins coagulate with heat, continued cooking tightens them and squeezes out water. Waiting past the point of full set makes the omelet rubbery and dry.

“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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