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Potatoes a LA Lyonnaise

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Potatoes a LA Lyonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Slice the boiled or cold potatoes into pieces about the size and thickness of a half crown.

  2. In a frying pan, melt the butter and add the sliced onions; fry until they are lightly colored.

  3. Add the sliced potatoes to the pan and toss until they turn a nice yellow.

Season and serve

  1. Season with chopped parsley, salt, pepper, and lemon juice; mix well over the heat.

  2. Serve very hot, ideally with cutlets.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that carries the heat and gives the onions and potatoes a rich flavor and golden color.
Onions
Caramelize gently in the butter, adding sweetness and savory depth to the dish.
Boiled potatoes
Form the body of the dish; cooked, cooled potatoes hold their shape and brown well when fried.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery, fried flavors.

The step that matters

Frying the sliced potatoes until yellow. Potatoes need enough fat and direct heat to brown evenly; if the pan is crowded or too cool, they steam and turn soggy instead of gaining color and crispness.

Swap the onion

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

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

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