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Lyonnaise Potatoes

Sautéed boiled potatoes with butter, onions, parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lyonnaise Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Pare and slice the potatoes.

  2. Chop the parsley.

Cook

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan and add the sliced onion. Cook until the onion is pale yellow.

  2. Add the potatoes to the pan, shaking to prevent burning. Toss the potatoes to brown them slightly and evenly for 5 minutes.

  3. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, and serve hot.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  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

Potatoes
Provide the starchy body of the dish, browning on the surface while staying tender inside.
Butter
Carries heat evenly across the pan and adds richness and flavor to the potatoes and onion.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savory depth as it softens and turns pale yellow in the fat.

The step that matters

Toss the potatoes in the pan. Tossing keeps the potato pieces moving so they brown evenly and do not scorch on one spot. Cooked potatoes are already tender, so the goal is surface browning, not cooking them through.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, parsley, 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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