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Dow to Make an Omelette

A simple egg omelette cooked with butter, parsley, salt, and optional cheese, fruit, or onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese 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 ↓

Dow to Make an Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat a frying pan over medium heat and add the butter.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs with parsley and salt until just combined.

  3. Pour the egg mixture into the pan once the butter is melted.

Cook and serve

  1. As it cooks, lift the edges with a knife and push them towards the center.

  2. When the omelette is set, fold it and serve immediately.

  3. For a cheese omelette, add grated cheese to the mixture before cooking.

  4. For a sweet omelette, spread fruit on top before folding.

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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 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 tender structure that forms the body of the omelette.
Butter
Adds richness and helps keep the omelette from sticking to the pan.

The step that matters

Lifting the edges and pushing them towards the center. Moving the liquid egg into the pan's hot surface lets it cook into small, tender curds rather than one tough, overcooked layer.

Swap the parsley

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

  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 butter, egg, cheese. 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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Cheese 71Ham 64French 61Sweet 59Herb 54Bread 49 See all 137 →

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