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Breakfast

To Make Omelets

A quick egg-based dish cooked in a skillet with butter, milk, salt, pepper, and optional flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Make Omelets

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Beat the egg yolks lightly, about twelve beats.

  2. Add milk, salt, pepper, and flour if using.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites until combined.

Cook the omelet

  1. Heat a skillet and melt the butter until hot but not burning.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the skillet; it should bubble and rise.

  3. Use a thin knife to lift the edges occasionally to prevent burning.

  4. When the bottom is set, fold the omelet and slide it onto a hot platter.

Serve

  1. 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provide the structure as their proteins set with heat, and beaten whites help the omelet rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and makes the cooked eggs more tender.
Butter
Fat that keeps the omelet from sticking and adds richness to the flavor.

The step that matters

Keep the heat controlled once the eggs go in. High heat toughens egg proteins and scorches the bottom before the centre sets. Cook until hot but not burning, and lift the edges so the omelet sets evenly without burning.

“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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