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Cheese Omelette

A light omelette made with eggs, cheese, parsley, cayenne pepper, salt, and suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cheese Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs.

  2. In a bowl, rub the yolks and add the cheese, parsley, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the yolk mixture.

Cook the omelette

  1. Melt the suet in an omelette pan until smoking.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and allow it to set.

  3. When the bottom is light brown, fold the omelette over three times.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, garnished with parsley.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + parsleytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,507 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Egg + cheesetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air for lift, while the yolks set into a rich, tender structure.
Cheese
Adds savoury flavour and a creamy richness to the yolk mixture.
Suet
Provides fat for frying, helping the underside brown and release cleanly from the pan.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten whites. Whites hold air only while they are stiff. Folding gently keeps that air in the mixture, so the omelette stays light instead of deflating into a dense, flat layer.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Dillfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

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