The defines the word "omelette" as "A dish consisting of whole eggs beaten and cooked in a pan in butter or oil, to which various ingredients can be added"."Omelette", . Retrieved 23 December 2025 There are two basic types of French omelette: folded and flat. Omelettes may be filled with various mixtures before being folded. Flat omelettes, , are served unfolded and resemble a thick pancake. In both cases, other ingredients may be added to the raw egg mix before it is cooked.Montagné, pp. 390–391
The dates the word "omelette" to the fourteenth century and says that it comes from words derived from the Latin , "egg" and diminutive of "blade", because of the shape of a typical folded omelette. By the seventeenth century, French cooks had invented a large number of variants of the basic omelette; François Pierre La Varenne, the author of (1653), set out a large number of recipes for "aumelettes",La Varenne, p. 198 ff most of which were translated into English by Robert May (1660).Davidson, p. 553
Some French omelettes are named after places, such as Boulogne, Burgundy, Dieppe, Rouen and many others. Some share the names of notable people – mostly French – including Agnès Sorel, Georges Feydeau, Louis XIV and Sarah Bernhardt.