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Potato Omelet

A baked potato is mixed with eggs, lemon juice, nutmeg, salt, and pepper, then fried or baked into an omelet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potato

  1. Bake the potato in its skin until tender.

  2. Pass the mealy part through a fine sieve.

Make the omelet

  1. Mix the potato with the yolks of the eggs, lemon juice, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

  2. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the potato mixture.

  3. Fry the omelet in hot butter for 4 to 5 minutes, or bake in the oven if preferred.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 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

Potato
Provides the bulk and soft, starchy body of the omelet once sieved.
Eggs
Yolks bind the mixture and whites, whisked stiff, lighten it and help it set.
Butter
Fats the pan and adds richness and browning to the outside of the omelet.
Lemon juice
Adds a light acidity that brightens the mild flavor of the potato and eggs.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites whisked to stiff peaks hold air that lifts the omelet. Folding gently keeps that air in, while stirring hard would deflate it and leave a dense result.

Swap the potato

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

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

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