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Lentil Omelet

A savory omelet made with boiled lentils, eggs, and lemon or lime juice, served with tomato sauce and fried parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lentil Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the omelet

  1. In a bowl, break the eggs and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Beat the eggs well and add the lentils and lemon or lime juice.

  3. Melt the butter in an omelet pan over medium heat.

  4. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and cook the omelet until set.

Serve

  1. Serve with tomato sauce and garnish with fried parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Lentils + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into the structure of the omelet as they cook, holding it together.
Lentils
Add body and texture to the omelet, giving it a firmer, heartier bite.
Butter
Adds richness and helps keep the omelet from sticking to the pan.

The step that matters

Cook the omelet until set. Cooking over medium heat until the egg is just set keeps the omelet tender and moist. Overcooking makes the eggs tough and dry, and the lentils can make it crumble if the eggs are not fully set.

Swap the lentils

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, lemon, butter, tomato, sauce, parsley. 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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