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Breakfast

Plain Omelet

A light, fluffy omelet made from beaten eggs, milk, salt, pepper, and optional cheese, fruit, or minced meat.

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

Plain Omelet

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Separate the egg whites and yolks.

  2. Beat the yolks until light.

  3. Add the milk, salt, and pepper to the yolks and mix well.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  5. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the yolk mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt butter in a hot frying pan without burning it.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the pan.

  3. If using cheese, fruit, or minced meat, add it before folding the omelet.

  4. Cook until just set.

  5. Fold the omelet in half.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + cheesetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 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
Whites trap air for lift, and yolks set to give the omelet its body.
Milk
Adds moisture so the omelet stays tender rather than dry.
Butter
Fat for frying that adds flavour and keeps the eggs from sticking.

The step that matters

Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the yolk mixture.. Stiff whites hold air that gives the omelet lightness. Heavy stirring knocks that air out, so the omelet turns dense and flat. 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.

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