Frittata is an egg-based dish similar to an omelette

Omelette

In cuisine, an omelette or omelet is a dish made from beaten eggs quickly cooked with butter or oil in a frying pan, sometimes folded around a filling such as cheese, vegetables, meat , or some combination of the above...

 or quiche

Quiche

Quiche is a savory, open-faced pie of vegetables, cheese, or meat in custard, baked in a pastry crust.The quiche is sometimes regarded as the savoury equivalent ofegg custard tart.- Etymology:...

, enriched with additional ingredients such as meat

Meat

Meat is animal flesh that is used as food. Most often, this means the skeletal muscle and associated fat and other tissues, but it may also describe other edible tissues such as organs and offal...

s, cheese

Cheese

Cheese is a generic term for a diverse group of milk-based food products. Cheese is produced throughout the world in wide-ranging flavors, textures, and forms....

s, vegetable

Vegetable

The noun vegetable usually means an edible plant or part of a plant other than a sweet fruit or seed. This typically means the leaf, stem, or root of a plant....

s or pasta

Pasta

Pasta is a staple food of traditional Italian cuisine, now of worldwide renown. It takes the form of unleavened dough, made in Italy, mostly of durum wheat , water and sometimes eggs. Pasta comes in a variety of different shapes that serve for both decoration and to act as a carrier for the...

. It may be flavored with herbs.

History

The Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 word frittata derives from fritto, the past participle of "to fry" (friggere), and was originally a general term for cooking eggs in a skillet, anywhere on the spectrum from fried egg

Fried egg

A fried egg is a food made from an egg fried whole with minimal accompaniment. They are traditionally eaten for breakfast in western countries, but may be eaten at other times of the day.-China:...

, through conventional omelette

Omelette

In cuisine, an omelette or omelet is a dish made from beaten eggs quickly cooked with butter or oil in a frying pan, sometimes folded around a filling such as cheese, vegetables, meat , or some combination of the above...

, to an Italian version of the Spanish tortilla de patatas

Tortilla de patatas

The Spanish omelette or Spanish tortilla, also called simply tortilla in English when there is no confusion with the Mexican maize tortilla, is a typically Spanish dish consisting of a thick egg omelette made with potatoes and fried in olive oil....

, made with pasta

Pasta

Pasta is a staple food of traditional Italian cuisine, now of worldwide renown. It takes the form of unleavened dough, made in Italy, mostly of durum wheat , water and sometimes eggs. Pasta comes in a variety of different shapes that serve for both decoration and to act as a carrier for the...

 instead of fried potato

Potato

The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family . The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well as the edible tuber. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species...

. Outside Italy, frittata was seen as equivalent to "omelette" until at least the mid-1950s.

In the last fifty years, "frittata" has become a term for a distinct variation that Delia Smith

Delia Smith

Delia Smith CBE is an English cook and television presenter, known for teaching basic cookery skills. She is the UK's best-selling cookery author, with more than 21 million copies sold....

 describes as "Italy's version of an open-face omelette". When used in this sense there are four key differences from a conventional omelette:

• There is always at least one optional ingredient in a Frittata and such ingredients are combined with the beaten egg mixture while the eggs are still raw rather than being laid over the mostly-cooked egg mixture before it is folded, as in a conventional omelette. Eggs for frittata may be beaten vigorously to incorporate more air than traditional savory omelettes, to allow a deeper filling and a fluffier result.

• The mixture is cooked over a very low heat, more slowly than an omelette, for at least 5–10 minutes, typically 15, until the underside is set but the top is still runny.

• The part-cooked frittata is not folded to enclose its contents like an omelette but is instead either turned over in full, or grilled briefly under an intense salamander to set the top layer, or baked for around five minutes.

• Unlike an omelette, which is generally served whole to a single diner, a frittata is usually divided into slices. It may be served hot or cold, accompanied by fresh salads, bread, beans, olives, etc.

Variations

Frittata is equivalent to an Iranian dish called kookoo

Kookoo

Kookoo is a Persian dish similar to the Italian dish frittata or an open-faced omelet. Iranians make many different types of Kookoos with a variety of flavorings...

. There are different types of kookoo such as kookoo sabzi (herb frittata) and kookoo sibzamini (potato frittata).