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Omelet

A quick egg omelet with flour, herbs, and cream, cooked in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 759 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Omelet

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mix the flour with the herbs and cream.

  2. Add salt, white pepper, and the well-beaten eggs.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a small frying pan and pour in the mixture.

  2. When hot, stir quickly with a spoon.

  3. As it begins to set, move it to the side of the pan opposite the handle.

  4. Carefully turn up the edges with a spoon or knife and shake the pan until browned.

  5. Turn the omelet onto a hot dish 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. Parsley + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together759 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Flour + leektop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a tender structure as they cook, forming the body of the omelet.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown in the hot pan.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the omelet tender rather than dry.
Flour
Helps bind the mixture and gives it a little more body when set.

The step that matters

Stirring while the eggs are hot. Stirring keeps small curds forming evenly so the eggs set soft. If the mixture is left still too long, it sets into a tough, rubbery layer with overcooked edges before the centre is done.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, parsley, leek, cream, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, parsley, leek, cream, 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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