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Trilby Omelet

A simple omelet made with eggs, water, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Trilby Omelet

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl and add cold water, salt, and pepper; beat until frothy.

  2. Heat butter in a frying pan until hot but not burning.

Cook the omelet

  1. Pour in the beaten eggs; lift the omelet gently in places while cooking.

  2. Cook until set; no need to turn the omelet.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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
Set with heat to form the omelet's structure and soft texture.
Cold water
Adds moisture that turns to steam, keeping the omelet light and tender.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps keep the omelet from sticking to the pan.

The step that matters

Cook until set; no need to turn the omelet.. Eggs set as their proteins firm up with heat. Cooking past set makes them tough and rubbery, so watch for the surface to lose its wetness and stop there.

“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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