Name: Mushroom Omelette
Ingredients: 6 mushrooms; 1 shallot; 2 teaspoons parsley; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; butter for cooking; 4 eggs

Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mushroom Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Remove the skins and stalks from the mushrooms and cut them small.
Add the minced shallot, parsley, pepper, and salt, then cook in a little butter.

Make and serve the omelette

Make a plain omelette and lay the cooked mushrooms on one half.
Fold the omelette over and serve.

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.

Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,982 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Set to form the omelette's structure and create a tender, custardy texture when cooked.
Mushrooms: Provide moisture and savoury, earthy flavour that fills the omelette.
Shallot: Adds a mild, sweet onion-like aroma that flavours the cooked filling.
Butter: Adds richness and carries flavour while cooking the filling and eggs.

Swap the shallot

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

Shallotthe original
Capsicumfits about as well
Spinachfits about as well
Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, parsley, pepper, butter, 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.