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Cheese Omelet

A baked dish of layered cheese, buttered bread, and egg yolk cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Omelet

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 the dish

  1. Butter the sides of a deep dish.

  2. Cover the bottom with thin slices of cheese.

  3. Layer thin slices of buttered bread on top.

  4. Sprinkle a little red pepper and mustard over the bread.

  5. Add another layer of cheese.

Bake

  1. Beat the egg yolk in a cup of cream and pour it into the dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for half an hour or until nicely browned.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps the custard set as it bakes.
Cream
Provides moisture and fat, giving a softer, silkier texture.
Cheese
Melts into the layers, adding flavour and a rich, savoury body.
Bread
Soaks up the custard and holds the layers together while it bakes.

The step that matters

Pour the custard over the layers gently. Egg yolk and cream set into a custard when heated. Pouring evenly lets the liquid soak through the bread and cheese so the dish cooks uniformly rather than staying runny in places.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cheese, bread, pepper, egg, cream. 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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