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The Savoury Omelette

A savory omelette made with eggs, butter, fresh or preserved roe, herbs, and topped with cheese, game, mushrooms, oysters, and sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and mushroom work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 778 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

The Savoury Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. If using preserved roe, soak and fry it in butter.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix in fine herbs.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the omelette in a hot pan with butter until set.

  2. Serve the omelette on a bed of tomato puree or green peas puree.

  3. Top with grated cheese or any desired additions like minced game, mushrooms, or oysters.

  4. Accompany with rich sauces like Espagnole, Perigueux, or Bechamel.

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. Spinach + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together778 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Tomato + spinachtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Peas + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together550 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into the omelette's structure as their proteins coagulate with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the surface of the omelette in the pan.
Grated cheese
Melts into the eggs, adding savory flavor and a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Cook the omelette in a hot pan with butter until set. Egg proteins set quickly with heat. Overcooking squeezes out moisture and makes the omelette tough and dry, so it should be removed as soon as the eggs are just set.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (roe, butter, egg, cheese, peas, spinach, mushroom):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, butter, egg, cheese, peas, spinach, mushroom. 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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