Why it works: Butter and egg 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 ↓
Omelette Au Lard
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Mince the bacon very fine.
Fry the bacon in butter until crispy.
In a bowl, beat the eggs and season with salt and pepper.
Cook and serve
Stir the beaten eggs into the bacon and cook until set.
Serve with a piquant sauce.
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.
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Bacon
- Provides salty, savoury flavour and fat that crisps in the pan.
- Butter
- Adds richness and helps fry the bacon and set the eggs.
- Eggs
- Set when heated, forming the structure that holds the omelette together.
The step that matters
Stir the beaten eggs into the bacon and cook until set. Eggs turn from liquid to firm as their proteins coagulate with heat. Cooking too hot or too long makes them tough and dry, so keep the heat moderate and stop once the eggs are just set.
“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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