Skip to main content
Breakfast

Norwegian Omelette

A savory omelette made with eggs, butter, Parmesan, parsley, shallot, bread crumbs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Norwegian Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Mix the melted butter with milk, cheese, shallot, and parsley.

  3. Add salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Beat the eggs well and mix them into the mixture.

  5. Fry the mixture in butter until cooked through.

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 omelette when heated, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and helps the omelette brown and release from the pan.
Milk
Adds moisture, keeping the cooked eggs softer and more tender.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty flavour and browns slightly in the pan.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add a light body to the filling.

The step that matters

Fry the mixture until cooked through. Eggs set over gentle heat; high heat toughens and dries them, so cook steadily until just set, not browned and rubbery.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, parmesan cheese, parsley, bread, milk, pepper):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, parmesan cheese, parsley, bread, milk, 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.

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes