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Omelettes

A cooked egg dish made with butter, eggs, and optional ingredients such as parsley, onion, cheese, shrimp, or oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Omelettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the omelette

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan until it is thoroughly hot.

  2. Beat the eggs briskly for 1-2 minutes before pouring them into the pan.

  3. Pour the eggs into the pan when the butter is boiling.

  4. Stir until the omelette thickens, then fold the edges over and serve hot.

Finish and vary

  1. If desired, brown the upper side with a salamander or heated shovel before folding.

  2. For a savory omelette, add minced parsley, onion, cheese, shrimps, or oysters.

  3. For a sweet omelette, serve with sifted sugar or spread jam in the middle before folding.

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

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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
Set into a soft structure that forms the body of the omelette as they cook.
Butter
Fats the pan and adds richness while keeping the eggs from sticking.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs briskly before pouring. Beating combines the whites and yolks and breaks up the proteins so the eggs cook evenly and become tender rather than uneven or rubbery.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, cheese, sugar. 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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