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Omelet

A cooked egg mixture with milk, flour, butter, and salt, folded with beaten whites and baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs separately.

  2. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour with a little cold milk to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add the flour mixture, beaten yolks, and salt to the scalded milk.

Fold and cook

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  2. Pour the mixture into a hot, buttered frying pan.

  3. Bake for 15 minutes until set.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Whites trap air for lift, and yolks set into the structure as the mixture cooks.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that cooks into a tender, custard-like body.
Flour
Thickens the liquid and gives the omelet body so it holds together.
Butter
Adds richness and helps keep the mixture from sticking to the pan.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Beaten whites hold air bubbles that give lift. Stirring vigorously knocks that air out, leaving a dense, flat result, so the whites should be folded in with slow, sweeping strokes.

“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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