Skip to main content
Main

Cheese Omelet

A baked cheese omelet made with buttered bread, cheese, red pepper, mustard, egg, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Cheese Omelet

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

  1. Butter the sides of a deep dish.

  2. Cover the bottom with thin slices of cheese.

  3. Layer very thin slices of buttered bread on top.

  4. Sprinkle with a little red pepper and mustard.

  5. Add another layer of cheese.

Bake

  1. Beat the yolk of an egg in a cup of cream and pour into the dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes or until nicely browned.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolk binds the cream into a custard that sets around the bread and cheese.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, so the custard stays soft and tender as it bakes.
Cheese
Melts into the layers and adds savory flavor and richness.
Thin slices of bread
Soaks up the custard and gives the bake a soft, layered structure.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and helps the bread brown on its surface.

The step that matters

Bake until nicely browned. The custard sets as egg proteins firm with heat. Baking too briefly leaves it runny, while overbaking can make it rubbery and dry.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cheese, bread, pepper, egg, cream):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cheese, bread, pepper, egg, cream. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes