Frittata

Frittata is an egg-based Italian dish similar to an omelette or crustless quiche, enriched with additional ingredients such as meats, cheeses, vegetables or pasta. The word frittata is Italian and roughly translates to "fried".

History

The Italian word frittata derives from friggere and roughly means fried. This was originally a general term for cooking eggs in a skillet, anywhere on the spectrum from fried egg, through conventional omelette, to an Italian version of the Spanish tortilla de patatas, made with fried potato. 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 describes as "Italy's version of an open-face omelette". When used in this sense, there are four key differences from a conventional omelette: