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Savoury Omelet

A lightly beaten egg mixture cooked with butter, parsley, shallot, thyme, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Savoury Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the omelet pan and clean it with kitchen paper.

  2. Melt the butter in the pan.

  3. In a bowl, beat the eggs lightly and add the parsley, thyme, shallot, pepper, and salt.

Cook the omelet

  1. When the butter bubbles, pour in the egg mixture and stir it with the butter.

  2. As the mixture begins to set at the bottom, tilt the pan to brown it lightly underneath.

  3. Tilt the pan the opposite way to set the other side.

  4. The omelet should be crescent-shaped, thick and creamy in the center, but not raw.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a structure that holds the omelet together while staying tender.
Butter
Adds richness and carries heat evenly so the eggs cook without sticking.
Shallot
Adds a mild aromatic onion flavor that stays gentle after cooking.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma and a light herbal note.
Thyme
Adds earthy, savory aroma that complements the eggs.

The step that matters

Leave the center creamy, not raw. Eggs keep cooking from residual heat after leaving the pan. Removing the omelet while the center is still slightly moist and glossy keeps it tender, while overcooking makes the proteins tighten and turn dry and rubbery.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Chivefits less well

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