Skip to main content
Main

Lyonnaise Potatoes

Lyonnaise potatoes are sautéed potatoes fried in fat with onion, parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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

Prepare

  1. Cut or chop cold Irish potatoes into bits about ½ inch square.

  2. Heat good dripping in a frying pan and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Fry the onion slices in the fat, then remove and discard them.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the potatoes to the hot fat and turn often to prevent browning until heated through.

  2. Mix in the minced parsley, stir, and toss for 2 minutes.

  3. Serve very hot, ensuring the potatoes are not greasy.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 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. Onion + parsleytop 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

Cold irish potatoes
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and fluffy inside as they heat through.
Good dripping
Carries heat evenly and gives the potatoes a rich, savoury flavour as they fry.
Onion
Infuses the frying fat with aroma and is removed before the potatoes are added.

The step that matters

Turning the potatoes often in the hot fat. Frequent turning spreads heat evenly, so the pieces warm through and brown lightly without scorching on one side. Letting them sit lets the surface over-brown and burn before the centres heat through.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes