Name: Vegetable Omelet
Ingredients: ready-dressed vegetables (cucumbers, artichokes, onions, sorrel, green peas, tomatoes, lentils, mushrooms, asparagus tops, potatoes, truffles, turnips); milk, cream, or gravy; seasoning; eggs; butter

Why it works: Sorrel and lentils share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Omelet

Ingredients

ready-dressed vegetables (cucumbers, artichokes, onions, sorrel, green peas, tomatoes, lentils, mushrooms, asparagus tops, potatoes, truffles, turnips)
milk, cream, or gravy
seasoning
eggs
butter

Directions

Mash the ready-dressed vegetables with a little milk, cream, or gravy, and season to taste.
Beat the eggs until very light.
Heat a frying pan and add a spoonful of butter.
Pour the beaten eggs into the pan and spread the vegetable purée on top.
When hot, fold the omelet and serve.

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.

Sorrel + lentilstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together20 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Artichoke + sorreltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Artichoke + lentilstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together19 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cucumber + sorreltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together119 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cucumber + artichoketop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together135 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, artichoke, sorrel, peas, tomato, lentils, mushroom):

Lettucefits better
Shallotfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, artichoke, sorrel, peas, tomato, lentils, mushroom. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.