 There are four essential ingredients to this sort of decision-theoretic situation. There are  outcomes, over which we have defined  utilities measuring the desirability of the outcome. In the case of the omelet the outcomes are a ruined omelet or a 5–6 egg omelet, with or without extra washing. There are  states–usually unknown to and out of the control of the actor–which influence the outcome of the decision. In our case the states are exhausted by the possible states of the suspect egg: either good or rotten. Finally, there are acts which are under the control of the decision maker. In our case the acts include breaking the egg into the bowl or the saucer. Of course, there are other conceivable acts: you might throw the suspect egg away and make do with a 5-egg omelet; you might even flip a coin to decide what to do. We omit these for the sake of simplicity.