Skip to main content
Breakfast

Savoury Omelet

A lightly seasoned egg omelet cooked with butter, shallot, thyme, parsley, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Savoury Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the omelet pan and clean it with kitchen paper.

  2. Melt the butter in the pan.

  3. In a bowl, beat the eggs lightly and add the parsley, thyme, and chopped shallot.

  4. Season with pepper and salt.

Cook the omelet

  1. When the butter bubbles, pour in the egg mixture and stir it with the butter.

  2. As the mixture begins to set at the bottom, tilt the pan to brown it lightly.

  3. Tilt the pan the opposite way to set the other side.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a delicate structure that forms the body of the omelet.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the egg set and brown lightly in the pan.
Shallot
Adds mild, sweet aromatic flavour to the egg mixture.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture with the butter after pouring it in. Stirring while the eggs are still liquid creates small, even curds; if the heat is too high or the eggs are left to sit, they can overcook and turn tough or rubbery. Keep the movement steady and tilt the pan once the base begins to set.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Chivefits less well

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

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes