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Omelet

A simple egg dish cooked with optional vegetables and served with brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and asparagus match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 165 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Omelet

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add chives or leeks, pepper, salt, and any optional ingredients like mushrooms, eschalots, young onions, or asparagus.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a skillet over medium heat and add butter or oil.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the skillet and cook until set, or bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until firm.

  3. Serve hot with a little brown gravy around the edge.

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. Chive + asparagustop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Chive + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Mushroom + asparagustop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Chive + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + asparagustop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 as they cook and coagulate from heat.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, chive, pepper, mushroom, asparagus):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, chive, pepper, mushroom, asparagus. 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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