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Omelet Lentil

A savory omelette made with boiled lentils, eggs, water, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and pepper work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 812 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Omelet Lentil

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the boiled lentils, beaten eggs, water, salt, and pepper in a bowl until smooth.

  2. Heat butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  3. Pour the lentil and egg mixture into the skillet and cook until set, then fold and serve.

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. Lentils + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Lentils + buttertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together486 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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
Bind the lentils and set into a firm, cohesive omelette when cooked.
Boiled lentils
Provide the bulk and body of the omelette, giving it a hearty, protein-rich texture.
Butter
Adds richness and helps prevent sticking while the omelette cooks in the skillet.

The step that matters

Cook until set, then fold. Cooking over medium heat lets the egg coagulate gently so it sets without turning rubbery or browning too fast. Folding only once the base is firm keeps the omelette intact.

Swap the lentils

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

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Peasfits better
  4. Lentilsthe 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.

“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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