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Omlette Aux Fines Herbes

A French omelette flavored with minced herbs and optional shallot, cooked in lard or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,898 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Omlette Aux Fines Herbes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Whisk the eggs lightly in a bowl until well combined.

  2. Add minced herbs, shallot, salt, and pepper to the eggs and mix gently.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat the lard or butter in a small frying pan over medium heat until hot.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and cook without stirring until the bottom is set.

  3. When the edges are firm, fold the omelet in half and serve immediately.

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. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Shallot + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Egg + shallottop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a delicate structure that forms the body of the omelette.
Lard or butter
Fat that keeps the eggs from sticking and adds richness to the surface.
Minced herbs
Add aroma and fresh flavour to the eggs.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sweet onion-like aroma to the eggs.

The step that matters

Cook without stirring until the bottom is set. Egg proteins coagulate as they heat, forming a firm base. Stirring while the bottom is still liquid breaks up these forming curds, producing a scrambled texture instead of a smooth omelette.

Flavor stand-ins for the shallot

The recipe marks shallot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, butter):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  3. Chivebetter flavor fit
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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