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Eggs a LA Suisse

A lightly cooked omelet with milk, butter, cheese, and cayenne, served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Eggs a LA Suisse

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat a small omelet pan and add the butter.

  2. Once melted, pour in the milk or cream.

  3. Slip in the eggs one at a time, sprinkling with salt, pepper, and a pinch of cayenne.

  4. When the whites are nearly firm, sprinkle with cheese.

  5. Finish cooking and serve on buttered toast.

  6. Pour sauce from the pan over the eggs.

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

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

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + cheesetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 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 main body of the dish as the whites firm up over gentle heat.
Milk or cream
Forms a thin, moist sauce in the pan that coats the eggs and keeps them tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps prevent sticking in the pan.
Grated cheese
Melts over the partly set whites, adding savoury flavour and a light golden finish.

The step that matters

Finish cooking and serve on buttered toast.. Egg whites turn firm and rubbery quickly with high heat, while the yolks should stay soft. Removing the pan at the right moment keeps the eggs tender and the sauce loose.

“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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