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Plain Omelet

A simple egg omelet cooked with optional ingredients such as butter, breadcrumbs, cheese, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 851 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Plain Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt butter in a small frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour in the beaten eggs and let them cook gently without stirring.

  3. Turn in the edges to prevent burning, tilting the pan if necessary.

  4. Cook until the bottom is light brown and the top is slightly jiggly.

  5. Slide the omelet onto a hot plate, fold it over, and serve immediately.

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. Potato + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into the structure of the omelet as they cook, forming its body.
Butter
Coats the pan to keep the omelet from sticking and adds rich flavor.

The step that matters

Cook gently without stirring. Eggs set into tender curds when heated gently. High heat or stirring can toughen them and cause overbrowning before the top is just set.

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, bread, flour, rice, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, bread, flour, rice, pepper, nutmeg. 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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