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Omelette Souffle

A light, airy omelette made by folding beaten egg whites into a cooked yolk mixture and baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Omelette Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Beat the yolks of 8 eggs with 1 tablespoon of water, ¼ teaspoon of salt, 1 tablespoon of sugar, and the juice of 1 lemon.

  2. Fry the mixture in a pan until cooked, then transfer it to a serving dish.

Top and bake

  1. Whip the 4 reserved egg whites to a froth with some sugar.

  2. Spread the whipped egg whites over the fried eggs and bake for a few minutes until set.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg yolks
Provide richness and set into the tender base of the omelette when cooked.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the top its light, airy, soufflé-like texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the eggs.

The step that matters

Whip the egg whites to a froth. Egg whites must be beaten until foamy so they trap air; under-whipped whites stay flat and won't give the soufflé-like lift, while over-whipping makes them dry and grainy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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