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Omelet with Mint and Leeks

A lightly seasoned omelet made with eggs, milk, mint, leeks, and cayenne pepper, cooked in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 with Mint and Leeks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt the butter over medium heat in a frying pan.

  2. Whisk together the eggs, milk, salt, cayenne pepper, mint, and leeks or onions in a bowl.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and cook until the omelet is thick and firm, about 6‑7 minutes.

  2. Slide the omelet onto a hot dish and fold it in half with the browned side facing up.

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. Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + leektop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together965 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mint + leektop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Leek + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together848 recipes

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

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 omelet as they cook, giving it body and firmness.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the omelet tender rather than dry.
Butter
Fat for the pan that helps prevent sticking and adds richness and light browning.
Leeks or onions
Add mild savoury sweetness and aroma to the egg mixture.
Mint
Contributes fresh aroma to the eggs.

The step that matters

Cook until thick and firm. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate under heat. Cooking too long or too hot makes them tough and rubbery, while stopping too early leaves the middle runny.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, pepper, leek, butter. 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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