Skip to main content
Breakfast

Omelette Aux Pommes De Terre

A French omelette with boiled potatoes, parsley, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Omelette Aux Pommes De Terre

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes with their skins on, then let them cool before peeling.

Cook the filling

  1. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add the chopped potatoes and cook, turning with a flat knife until nicely browned.

  3. Add parsley, pepper, and salt, then keep warm.

Make the omelette

  1. Whisk the eggs with milk.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the pan.

  3. Sprinkle the potatoes into the eggs.

  4. Fold the omelet.

  5. 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set when heated to form the body of the omelette and bind the filling together.
Potatoes
Provide the bulk, with browned edges adding savoury flavour and a tender interior.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the potatoes brown in the pan.
Milk
Adds moisture so the eggs cook up softer and more tender.
Flour
Helps thicken the egg mixture slightly so it holds together better.

The step that matters

Fold the omelet. Eggs keep cooking after they leave the heat, so overcooking makes them dry and rubbery. Folding while the top is still slightly moist keeps the omelette tender.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, egg, parsley, pepper, milk):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, parsley, pepper, milk. 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

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes