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Friars' Omelette

A baked omelette made with apples, butter, sugar, eggs, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Friars' Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple mixture

  1. Boil the apples until soft.

  2. Stir in the butter and sugar to taste.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

Prepare the dish

  1. Butter a deep baking dish.

  2. Coat the bottom and sides with bread crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the apple and egg mixture into the dish.

  2. Sprinkle more bread crumbs on top.

  3. Bake until golden.

  4. Turn it out onto another dish.

  5. Grate sugar over it before serving.

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

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

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

  4. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk and soft, sweet body of the omelette once cooked down.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the apple mixture.
Eggs
Bind the cooled apple mixture and set on baking to give a custard-like structure.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on the outside and help the dish release cleanly.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Hot apple mixture would begin to scramble or cook the beaten eggs unevenly before baking, so cooling keeps the eggs smooth and lets them set evenly in the oven.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, bread):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, bread. 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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