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Breakfast

Plain Omelet

A simple egg dish cooked in butter, folded and served hot.

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 ↓

Plain Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs with milk and salt until mixed but not too light.

  2. Heat the melted butter in a small frying pan.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and fry like fried eggs.

  2. When partly set, run a knife around the edges to loosen it.

  3. Shake the omelet to fold it over itself.

  4. When the underside is golden and the middle is nearly set, roll it with a knife and slide it onto a hot dish.

  5. Serve immediately while light and soft.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (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 a tender structure that forms the body of the omelet.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the beaten eggs.
Melted butter
Greases the pan and adds richness and flavour to the omelet.

The step that matters

When the underside is golden and the middle is nearly set, roll it and slide it out. Eggs keep cooking from residual heat after leaving the pan. Removing the omelet while the middle is still slightly moist keeps it soft, while overcooking makes it firm, dry and rubbery.

“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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