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Egg Omelette

A simple omelette made with flour, milk, butter, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Egg Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the flour with the milk in a bowl until smooth.

  2. Add the butter and the egg, whisk until well combined.

Cook

  1. Heat a skillet over medium heat, then add the mixture.

  2. Cook until the omelette is set and lightly browned, then flip to cook the other side.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Egg
Sets into a firm structure as it cooks, forming the body of the omelette.
Flour
Thickens the mixture slightly so it holds together rather than running thin.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the mixture, keeping the omelette tender.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the omelette brown lightly in the skillet.

The step that matters

Cook until set, then flip. Flipping too early leaves the egg uncooked and likely to tear, while cooking too long makes it dry and rubbery. Egg proteins set with heat, so wait until the surface is firm before turning.

“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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