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Receipt for the Common Omelette

A simple omelette made with eggs, salt, onion, parsley, shallot, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot 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 ↓

Receipt for the Common Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl and beat them well with a fork.

  2. Add the salt, onion, parsley, and minced shallot to the eggs and mix well.

  3. Break half of the butter into small pieces and add it to the egg mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt the remaining butter in a clean frying pan.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and stir until it begins to set.

  3. Turn up the edges of the omelette and cook until it is golden brown.

  4. To serve, place a plate over the omelette and flip the pan upside down.

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

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

  2. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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 forms the body of the omelette.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and helps the omelette brown in the pan.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and mild flavour to the egg mixture.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sweet onion-like aroma and flavour to the eggs.

The step that matters

Turn up the edges of the omelette and cook until it is golden brown. Eggs cook quickly and become tough or dry if overcooked. Stop once the surface is just set and the edges are golden, so the centre stays tender.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, parsley, clove, shallot, butter. 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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