Skip to main content
Main

Lyonnaise Potatoes

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lyonnaise Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add onion and fry until amber in color.

  3. Add sliced cold boiled potatoes and stir until they begin to brown.

  4. Stir in chopped parsley and cook briefly.

  5. Drain the mixture through a colander to retain moisture and parsley particles.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat for frying, carries flavor, and helps the onion and potatoes brown.
Onion
Frying until amber develops sweet, savory flavor through browning.
Cold boiled potatoes
Firm, starchy slices hold their shape and brown on the surface in hot fat.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma that brightens the fried potatoes.

The step that matters

Browning the potatoes. Browning needs direct contact with hot fat and dry surfaces, which drives the Maillard reaction that creates color and flavor. Stirring too often or too early keeps the slices pale and soft, so the potatoes need time to sit and brown between stirs.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits less well

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