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Cheese Omelet

A quick egg dish with parsley and cheese, cooked in butter and folded.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Mix in the chopped parsley and grated cheese.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt a little butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the hot pan.

  3. Cook until set, then fold the omelet over.

  4. Slide it 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. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + cheesetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,507 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a delicate structure that holds the omelet together when folded.
Grated cheese
Melts into the eggs, adding richness and a savoury flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and helps prevent the eggs from sticking to the pan.

The step that matters

Cook until set, then fold the omelet over. Eggs turn firm as their proteins coagulate under heat. Cooking over too high a heat or for too long makes them tough and dry, while stopping at the right moment keeps them tender and lets the omelet fold without tearing.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cheese, 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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