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Orange Omelet

A light omelet flavored with orange juice, rind, and sugar, finished with lemon juice and orange garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the omelet

  1. In a bowl, combine eggs, salt, fruit sugar, orange juice, lemon juice, and grated orange rind.

  2. Cook the mixture in a skillet with butter, following the method for a foamy omelet.

Finish and serve

  1. Fold the omelet.

  2. Turn it out onto a plate.

  3. Sprinkle with fruit sugar.

  4. Garnish with orange sections.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 that sets into the body of the omelet.
Fruit sugar
Adds sweetness and helps lightly brown the surface.
Orange juice
Adds moisture and bright citrus flavor to the eggs.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that sharpens the citrus flavor.
Grated orange rind
Adds aromatic orange oil and fragrance to the omelet.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps prevent sticking in the skillet.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon, 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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