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Potato Lyonaise

A sautéed potato dish with butter, onion, parsley, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Potato Lyonaise

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the chopped onion in butter until yellow.

  2. Add the diced potatoes and stir gently with a fork until they absorb all the butter. Be careful not to break the potato dice.

  3. Stir in the chopped parsley and lemon juice.

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

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

  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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish; their starch and pieces hold their shape and soak up the butter.
Butter
Fat that coats the potatoes, adds richness, and carries the flavour of the onion.
Onion
Frying softens and sweetens it, adding savoury depth to the butter and potatoes.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and potatoes.

The step that matters

Stirring in the potatoes. Stirring gently with a fork keeps the diced potatoes intact. Vigorous stirring breaks their surfaces and mashes the starch, turning the dish pasty instead of distinct pieces coated in butter.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, 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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