Name: Potato Omelet, Sweet
Ingredients: 1½ cups cooked potato; 3-4 eggs; 3 tablespoons milk; ½ ounce sugar; a dash of grated nutmeg; a dash of lemon rind; a few drops of lemon juice; 1½ ounces butter

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Potato Omelet, Sweet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potato

Pass the cooked potato through a sieve.
Add milk to the potato.
Bring to a boil.
Let it cool.

Make the omelet

Stir in the eggs, sugar, nutmeg, lemon rind, and lemon juice.
Cook in a frying pan with butter, keeping the mixture round or folded as desired.
Optionally, spread a little jam or orange marmalade before serving.

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.

Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,052 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,230 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked potato: Provides the bulk and soft, moist body of the omelet.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and set on heating to give the omelet its structure.
Butter: Adds richness and helps the omelet brown lightly in the pan.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the mild potato and lemon flavors.

Swap the potato

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

Sweet potatofits about as well
Asparagusfits about as well
Arrowrootfits about as well
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar, nutmeg, lemon, butter. 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.