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Potato Omelet

A savory dish of mashed potatoes mixed with onions, carrots, turnips, and parsley, formed into cutlets, breaded, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Potato Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes and vegetables

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Mash the potatoes with 1 tablespoon of butter, seasoning, and enough hot milk to moisten.

  3. Chop the onions finely.

  4. Fry the onions in 1 teaspoon of butter until golden brown.

  5. Wash and peel the carrots and turnips.

  6. Boil the carrots and turnips separately until tender.

  7. Chop the boiled carrots and turnips.

Shape the cutlets

  1. Combine the chopped vegetables and browned onions with the mashed potatoes.

  2. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and parsley.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Mold the mixture into small cutlets.

  5. Dip the cutlets in the beaten egg.

  6. Roll the cutlets in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the cutlets in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Drain the cutlets.

  3. Serve with brown sauce.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 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

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the mixture, giving the cutlets a soft, moldable body.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the mashed potatoes and the browned onions.
Egg
Binds the cutlets and helps the bread crumb coating adhere.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned crust when the cutlets are fried.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth once browned in butter.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping the cutlets. A warm, soft mash is too loose to hold its shape and can tear or slump when molded and coated. Cooling firms the starches so the cutlets keep their form through dipping and frying.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, pepper, parsley, carrot, turnip, egg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, pepper, parsley, carrot, turnip, egg. 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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