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Lyonnaise Potatoes

Lyonnaise potatoes are sautéed potatoes with butter and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lyonnaise Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the onion

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onion and cook until golden brown.

Brown the potatoes and serve

  1. Add the potatoes, ensuring each piece is coated with butter.

  2. Toss and cook until all pieces are browned.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps the potatoes brown evenly in the pan.
Onion
Turns sweet and aromatic as its sugars caramelize during golden browning.
Potatoes
Their starch browns on the surface, giving crisp edges and a tender interior.

The step that matters

Coating the potatoes and browning them until all pieces are golden. Butter on each piece helps heat transfer and promotes browning. Surface moisture must evaporate before the potato surface can brown, so pieces left wet or crowded tend to steam and stay pale.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Asparagusfits less well
  4. Leekfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, potato. 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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