Skip to main content
Main

Savoury Omelet

A quick egg omelet with shallot, parsley, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Savoury Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the egg mixture

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl.

  2. Add the cream or milk, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper. Beat well.

Cook the omelet

  1. Melt the butter in an omelet pan. Fry the shallot until golden.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg mixture. Cook, stirring, until it begins to set.

  3. Roll the omelet into a cushion shape. Cook until golden.

  4. Turn out onto a hot dish. 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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 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 a structure that forms the body of the omelet.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and helps the omelet brown lightly in the pan.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and softness to the beaten eggs.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sweet onion flavour when fried until golden.

The step that matters

Cook the eggs with gentle stirring until they just begin to set. Eggs turn tough and rubbery when overcooked. Stirring while they set keeps curds small and tender, and rolling while still moist keeps the omelet soft.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, cream, butter, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes