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Dessert

Fancy French Omelette

A sweet omelette made with eggs, sugar, flour, whipped cream, and thick cider apple sauce, glazed with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Fancy French Omelette

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of 4 eggs with the rind of a lemon rubbed on the crushed sugar.

  2. Add the flour and whipped cream, mixing well.

  3. Beat the egg whites until very stiff and fold them into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pan and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 5 minutes.

  2. Fold the omelette onto a plate, fill it with the thick cider apple-sauce, glaze with sugar, and serve.

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. Cider + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air that lifts and sets the omelette as it bakes.
Flour
Starch and proteins set during baking to give the omelette its body.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the omelette tender rather than dry.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the surface brown when glazed.

The step that matters

Fold the whipped whites into the mixture. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped egg whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the omelette dense instead of light and puffed.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, cream, cider, sauce):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applethe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, cream, cider, sauce. 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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