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Bread Omelet

A sweet and savory omelet made with stale bread, butter, sugar, currants, almond meal, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Bread Omelet

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the bread

  1. Soak the bread in cold milk or water for 5 minutes.

  2. Place the soaked bread in a cloth and press out as much moisture as possible.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the currants, almond meal, lemon or orange zest, egg yolks, cinnamon or mace, and salt, and mix well.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a large flat pan and oil it well, then sprinkle with rye nuts.

  2. Pour the batter into the pan.

  3. Cook, turning the omelet.

  4. Or bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

  5. Serve with fruit sauce and a green salad.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air, giving the omelet a light, airy lift when folded in.
Egg yolks
Yolks add richness and help bind the batter, setting as the omelet cooks.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, butter adds fat that gives a tender, rich crumb.
Almond meal
Ground almonds add body and moisture, giving the batter a soft, dense texture.
Sugar
Sugar sweetens the batter and helps the surface brown during cooking.
Stale milk bread
Soaked and pressed bread gives the batter structure and body, though its moisture is removed first.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air bubbles that give lift. Stirring hard or briskly deflates them, leaving a dense, flat omelet.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, butter, sugar, almond, lemon, egg. 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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