Skip to main content
Breakfast

French Omelette

A light omelette made with separate beaten egg whites and yolks, flavored with butter, cream, nutmeg, onion juice, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

French Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg whites until very stiff and set aside in a cool place.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the yolks with salt, pepper, butter, cream, nutmeg, onion juice, and parsley.

Cook

  1. Gently fold the yolk mixture into the egg whites.

  2. Cook in a buttered pan over medium heat until set and lightly browned.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they give the omelette its light, airy structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and flavour, and help the omelette set into a tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and helps the omelette brown lightly in the pan.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the omelette tender rather than dry.

The step that matters

Fold the yolk mixture into the egg whites. Folding gently keeps the whipped whites full of air. Stirring or beating them down makes the omelette dense and flat instead of light and puffed.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, butter, walnut, cream, nutmeg, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, butter, walnut, cream, nutmeg, 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.

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes