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Omelet

A fried egg mixture with pepper, salt, nutmeg, parsley, shallot, ham, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot 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 ↓

Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the omelette

  1. Beat the eggs extremely well and strain them.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, nutmeg, minced parsley, minced shallot, grated ham, and a little gravy.

  3. Fry lightly in ¼ cup of butter.

  4. Hold a salamander or hot shovel over the top to remove the raw appearance of the eggs.

Serve

  1. Serve with rich thick brown gravy or dry if preferred.

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 + shallottop 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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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 when cooked, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the heat to brown the surface lightly.
Grated lean ham
Adds savoury flavour and salt-cured taste to the filling.
Minced shallot
Adds a mild, sweet onion-like aroma to the eggs.

The step that matters

Beating and straining the eggs. Beating well and straining breaks up the egg proteins and removes stringy whites, so the omelette cooks to an even, tender texture instead of a rubbery or lumpy one.

Swap the shallot

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

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

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