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Fruit Omelet

A light omelet flavored with orange slices, powdered sugar, and citrus juices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, beat the egg yolks until thick and light colored.

  2. Add hot water, salt, and pepper, then fold in the stiff egg whites.

  3. Sprinkle the orange slices with powdered sugar and fold them into the egg mixture along with the orange and lemon juice.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat and butter the omelet pan, then pour in the mixture.

  2. Cook over moderate heat, shaking the pan gently and running a knife through the center to prevent burning.

  3. When puffed and lightly browned on the bottom, brown the top under the broiler or with a hot shovel.

  4. Fold the omelet when turning it out, allowing it to show tenderness.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + orangetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,402 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites trapped by folding create the light, puffed structure of the omelet.
Egg yolks
Beaten yolks add richness and body to the batter.
Oranges
Sliced fruit adds sweetness, moisture and bright citrus flavor.
Powdered sugar
Sugar on the orange slices sweetens the fruit and helps it soften slightly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet fruit flavor.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiff egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whites intact. Stirring or deflating them makes the omelet dense and flat instead of light and puffed.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, sugar, lemon, butter):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Mangofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, sugar, lemon, butter. 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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