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Lyonnaise Potatoes

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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. Slice the cold boiled potatoes endwise and then crosswise into small squares.

Fry

  1. Heat the butter or drippings in a frying pan.

  2. Fry the chopped onion until it begins to change color and look yellow.

  3. Add the potatoes, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and stir gently.

  4. Cook for about 5 minutes, being careful not to break the potatoes.

  5. Just before serving, stir in the minced parsley.

  6. Drain the potatoes by shaking them in a heated colander.

  7. Serve very 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. 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

Potatoes
Form the body of the dish; cold boiled potatoes hold their shape when fried.
Butter or drippings
Fat for frying that browns the potatoes and carries flavor.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savory depth as it softens and turns yellow in the fat.

The step that matters

Add the potatoes and stir gently. Cold, cut potatoes are fragile and break apart if stirred roughly, which turns them mushy instead of keeping distinct browned pieces. Gentle stirring lets their surfaces contact the hot fat and brown evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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