Skip to main content
Main

Omelette Au Pain

A French-style omelette cooked with bread crumbs and milk, folded and finished in the oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Omelette Au Pain

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  2. Combine the yolks with milk, salt, pepper, and bread crumbs. Mix well.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites until fully combined.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt butter in a smooth frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the pan.

  3. Loosen the edges with a knife after 1-2 minutes.

  4. When the omelet is slightly firm, place the pan in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1 minute to set the center.

  5. Fold the omelet in half or thirds 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. 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 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
Whites trapped by folding add lift, while yolks add richness and set the omelet's structure.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and egg, giving the omelet a softer, more tender body.
Milk
Adds moisture and dilutes the egg, keeping the omelet tender rather than dry.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Deflating the whites by stirring or overmixing removes the air that gives lift, leaving a dense omelet. Folding keeps the foam intact.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipesFried BreadFried Bread30 recipes