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Bread Omelet No. 1

A savory or sweet omelet made with soaked bread, eggs, spices, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread Omelet No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl and remove the treadles.

  2. Soak the bread in your choice of liquid based on whether you want a sweet or savory omelet.

Make the mixture

  1. Beat the eggs with nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add the soaked bread and mix well while beating constantly.

Cook

  1. Heat a buttered frying pan until hot, then pour in the omelet mixture.

  2. Cook on one side only, then turn it onto a dish and fold it to prevent steam from condensing.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into the omelet's structure as they cook, holding the soaked bread together.
Bread
Soaked bread absorbs liquid and adds softness and moisture to the set eggs.
Butter
Fat for frying that keeps the omelet from sticking and adds richness and browning.

The step that matters

Heat the buttered pan until hot before pouring in the mixture. Egg proteins set quickly on contact with a hot surface. A properly hot, buttered pan gives a tender, evenly set omelet instead of a tough, sticky one that sticks and tears.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Sagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, milk, pepper, 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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