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Potatoes a LA Lyonnaise

A dish of diced parboiled potatoes sautéed with onion, parsley, butter or dripping, seasoned with pepper and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Potatoes a LA Lyonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut parboiled potatoes into dice.

  2. Chop the onion and fry it with minced parsley in butter or dripping for 1 minute.

Fry and serve

  1. Add the potatoes and stir briskly, frying slowly for 5 minutes without browning.

  2. Sprinkle with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Drain excess fat by shaking in a heated colander 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. 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

Parboiled potatoes
Partly cooked starch that fries to a crisp outside while staying tender inside.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury flavour as it softens in the fat.
Butter or dripping
Conducts heat for frying and carries flavour into the potatoes.

The step that matters

Frying the potatoes without browning. Frying slowly over gentle heat after stirring briskly lets the potatoes cook through and soften without burning. Browning too early creates bitter, scorched flavour and uneven texture.

Swap the onion

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

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

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