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Breakfast

Plain Omelet

A simple omelet made with eggs, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Plain Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl and add salt and pepper; beat well.

  2. Heat the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the eggs into the hot pan and stir rapidly until they begin to cook.

  2. Tilt the pan to shape the omelet, roll the edges, and turn it onto a dish.

  3. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set when heated, forming the body and structure of the omelet.
Butter
Fat that coats the pan, keeping the eggs from sticking and adding richness.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs rapidly once they hit the pan. Constant stirring breaks the egg into small curds while it is still runny, giving a tender texture. If the eggs are left to set in large sheets, the omelet becomes tough and dry, and it becomes harder to shape and roll.

“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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