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Omelette Au Jambon

A French omelette with ham, onion or parsley, chives, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,907 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Omelette Au Jambon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs until creamy.

  2. Add milk, flour, ham, onion (or parsley), chives, salt, and pepper.

  3. Mix until smooth.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Cook

  1. Melt butter in a medium-sized pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour the mixture into the pan and cook until set.

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. Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + chivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Chive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the structure that sets the omelette, with yolks adding richness and whites adding lightness.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the omelette tender as it cooks.
Flour
Helps thicken the mixture slightly so it holds together when cooked.
Ham
Adds savoury flavour and body to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and helps prevent sticking in the pan.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Beaten whites trap air that gives the omelette its lift. Stirring or deflating them vigorously knocks out this air, leaving a dense, flat result.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, flour, ham, chive, pepper, 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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