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Dessert

Fancy French Omelette

A sweet omelette made with eggs, sugar, lemon rind, flour, whipped cream, and filled with thickened cider apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 crushed sugar and lemon rind.

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

  3. Beat the egg whites until very stiff.

  4. Fold the stiff egg whites into the mixture.

  5. Pour the batter into a buttered pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 5 minutes.

  2. Fold the omelette onto a plate.

  3. Fill the omelette with the cider apple-sauce.

  4. Glaze the omelette with sugar.

  5. 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. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites give the batter lift and an airy, soufflé-like structure when baked.
Flour
Provides starch that helps set the batter so it holds its shape after folding.
Whipped cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the omelette tender rather than dry.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the surface brown lightly when glazed.

The step that matters

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

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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