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Nut Omelette

A fluffy omelette flavored with finely chopped nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Nut Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs separately.

  2. Add the milk to the beaten yolks.

  3. Fold the yolk mixture into the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  4. Add the chopped nuts and pour the mixture into a very hot pan with melted butter.

Cook and serve

  1. As the mixture begins to set, lift the edges to let the uncooked part run underneath.

  2. Continue until the omelette is firm all over, then fold it over and 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. Milk + nutstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together982 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Nuts + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites trapped with air provide structure, and the yolks set to form a tender body.
Milk
Adds moisture to the yolks, keeping the omelette soft rather than dry as it sets.
Chopped nuts
Add texture and a rich, toasty flavour to the set omelette.
Butter
Fat conducts heat into the pan and adds flavour and gentle browning to the surface.

The step that matters

Pour into a very hot pan and lift the edges as it sets. A hot pan sets the egg quickly so it stays tender. Lifting the edges lets the runny top flow underneath, cooking evenly instead of turning rubbery.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Cocoafits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, 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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