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Omelette a Ux Fines Herbes

A quick omelette flavored with parsley, chives, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,150 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Omelette a Ux Fines Herbes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Add the chopped parsley, chives, and onion just before cooking.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour in the egg mixture and cook until set, gently turning the pan to shape the omelette.

  3. Serve immediately.

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 + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chive + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 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 the structure of the omelette as they cook, forming its body.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green herbal aroma and flavour to the eggs.
Chives
Add a mild onion-like aroma and fresh flavour to the eggs.
Onion
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the omelette.
Butter
Adds fat that prevents sticking and contributes richness and browning in the pan.

The step that matters

Cook until just set. Egg proteins set at moderate heat and become tough and rubbery if overcooked. Removing the pan from heat while the surface is still slightly moist lets residual heat finish the omelette gently, keeping it tender.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, parsley, chive, 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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