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Friar's Omelette

An oven-baked omelette made with marmalade or fruit puree, breadcrumbs, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Friar's Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Make a marmalade or purée with apples or rhubarb.

  3. Stir in the powdered biscuit, rusk, or bread crumbs that have been sprinkled with melted butter, sprinkling biscuit crumbs over the top.

Bake and serve

  1. For an improvement, stir in 2 eggs before baking.

  2. Fill a shallow dish with the mixture.

  3. Bake in the oven until set.

  4. Turn out onto a napkin and serve.

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

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

  2. Biscuit + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Apple + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Egg + biscuittop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,643 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable omelette.
Marmalade or purée
Adds sweetness, fruity acidity and moisture to the dish.
Powdered biscuit, rusk, or bread crumbs
Provides dry starch that soaks up moisture and gives the omelette body.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and helps the crumbs brown lightly.

The step that matters

Bake in the oven until set. Eggs set through gentle heat as their proteins coagulate. Overbaking makes them dry and rubbery, while underbaking leaves the centre runny and unable to hold its shape when turned out.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, biscuit, 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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