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A Delicious Omelet

A fluffy omelet made with beaten eggs, water, butter, pepper, and salt, cooked in a pan and finished in the oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter 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 ↓

A Delicious Omelet

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the eggs

  1. Separate the eggs and beat the whites until stiff.

  2. Beat the yolks, then add water and beat again.

  3. Carefully fold the yolks into the beaten whites, adding pepper and salt.

Cook and serve

  1. In a frying pan, heat the butter.

  2. Pour the mixture into the frying pan and cook until the underside is a delicate brown.

  3. Transfer to a 400°F (200°C) oven to set the top.

  4. Once done, loosen the edges from the pan, fold over, and serve on a hot platter.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Eggs
Whites trap air for lift and structure, while yolks add richness and set to a tender body.
Butter
Fat for cooking the omelet, adding flavor and helping the underside brown without sticking.
Water
Adds moisture that turns to steam during cooking, keeping the omelet light and tender.

The step that matters

Fold the yolks into the whites carefully. Whites hold their air through stiff beating, and deflating them by vigorous mixing makes the omelet dense and flat. Gentle folding keeps the air bubbles that give it lift.

“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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