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Omelet, with Sardines

A fried egg dish with sardines folded into the omelet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Omelet, with Sardines

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs with salt and pepper.

  2. Heat butter in a skillet over medium heat.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour in the eggs and cook until they begin to set.

  2. Add sardines on one half of the omelet.

  3. Fold the omelet and cook for another minute until fully set.

  4. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. 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
Set into the structure of the omelet as they cook, holding the filling together.
Sardines
Add rich, savoury flavour and substance as the filling inside the folded omelet.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the skillet and helps keep the eggs from sticking.

The step that matters

Fold the omelet and cook until fully set. Eggs cook quickly once heated, and if they are folded before the surface has set, they tear and leak. Finishing the cook after folding lets the egg firm through without browning too hard.

“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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