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Asparagus Omelet

A quick egg and asparagus dish cooked in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 566 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Asparagus Omelet

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the asparagus with a little salt until half cooked, then cut the edible part into small pieces.

  2. Beat the eggs in a bowl and mix in the asparagus pieces.

  3. If desired, add chopped parsley before cooking.

Cook

  1. Heat butter in a frying pan.

  2. Pour in the egg and asparagus mixture.

  3. Cook until set.

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. Asparagus + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together566 recipes

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Asparagus + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Asparagus + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,026 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a firm, tender structure that holds the omelet together.
Asparagus
Adds bite and texture to the egg mixture once cut into small pieces.
Butter
Fats the pan so the omelet releases cleanly and browns lightly.

The step that matters

Cook until set. Eggs set when proteins coagulate under gentle heat. Cooking too hard or too long makes the omelet tough, dry and rubbery, so stop once the surface is no longer runny.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, egg, butter):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, egg, 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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