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Potato Omelet

A fried potato and egg mixture seasoned with pepper, salt, lemon juice, and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Potato Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potato

  1. Break the potato open and scoop out the inside with a spoon.

  2. Beat the potato until smooth and mix in pepper, salt, lemon juice, and the yolks of the eggs.

Cook and serve

  1. Just before frying, add the beaten egg whites.

  2. Fry the mixture in a hot pan for 5-6 minutes, folding the omelet over.

  3. Serve on a hot dish and garnish with parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Potato
Provides the bulk and soft, moist body of the omelette.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the mixture; whites are beaten in to lighten and set the omelette.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the potato and eggs.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg whites. Egg whites should be added just before frying because beaten whites slowly lose their air as they stand. Folding them in last keeps the omelette light when it sets in the hot pan.

Swap the potato

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

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

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