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A Fine Receipt for a Savoury Omelette

A savory omelette made with eggs, butter, herbs, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

A Fine Receipt for a Savoury Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Break the eggs and beat them until thin enough to pass through a fine sieve.

  2. Continue beating until perfectly smooth.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a small omelette frying pan.

  2. Pour in the beaten eggs and cook until they rise and firm up.

  3. Slide the omelette onto a warm plate and fold it over.

  4. Sprinkle finely minced herbs, pepper, and salt over the unfried side.

  5. Use a salamander to gently cook the unfried side if needed.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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 soft, tender structure when heated, forming the body of the omelette.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and keeps the eggs from sticking to the pan.

The step that matters

Pour in the beaten eggs and cook until they rise and firm up. Eggs set quickly over moderate heat. Cooking too hot or too long toughens and browns the proteins, making the omelette dry and rubbery instead of tender.

“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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