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Savoury Omelet

A quick egg omelet flavored with pepper, salt, thyme, parsley, and optional onion or shallot.

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

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs until well mixed.

  2. Add the chopped pepper, salt, thyme, parsley, and optional onion or shallot.

  3. Heat a non-stick skillet over medium heat and pour in the egg mixture.

  4. Cook until the edges set, then gently lift the edges to allow uncooked egg to flow underneath.

  5. Once mostly set, fold the omelet in half 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 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 the structure of the omelet as they cook, holding the filling together.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma and a light herbal flavour to the eggs.
Dried thyme
Adds earthy, herbal aroma that complements the eggs.

The step that matters

Cook until the edges set, then lift to let uncooked egg flow underneath. Cooking over medium heat and lifting the edges lets the eggs set gently into a tender layer. If the heat is too high, the proteins tighten quickly and the omelet turns rubbery and browned instead of soft.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, thyme, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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