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Potato Omelette

A skillet omelette made with potato flour or mashed potatoes, eggs, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Potato Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix potato flour or mashed potatoes with eggs, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  2. Heat a skillet over medium heat and add a little oil or butter.

Cook

  1. Pour the mixture into the skillet and cook until the bottom is light brown.

  2. Flip and cook the other side until golden brown.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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
Set into the structure of the omelette as they cook, holding it together.
Potato flour or mashed potatoes
Adds body and starch to the mixture, giving a softer, thicker texture.
Lemon juice
Adds a small amount of acidity that brightens the flavour of the eggs.

The step that matters

Cook the bottom until light brown, then flip. Egg proteins set from the bottom up, so flipping too early leaves the omelette runny and likely to tear, while cooking too long over medium heat can make it dry and rubbery.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, nutmeg, lemon. 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.

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