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Lyonnaise Potatoes

A baked potato gratin with sliced potatoes, onions, milk, breadcrumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Slice the potatoes and chop the onion finely.

Assemble the dish

  1. Cover the bottom of a baking dish with a layer of potatoes and sprinkle with some chopped onion. Season with salt and pepper.

  2. Alternate layers of potatoes and seasoning until the dish is full.

  3. Cover the top with bread crumbs and dot with small bits of butter.

  4. Pour the milk over the entire dish.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish; their starch thickens and softens as they cook in the milk.
Milk
Supplies moisture and creates a creamy sauce that soaks through the layers as it bakes.
Onion
Adds aroma and savory flavor that spreads through the potato layers as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the top brown evenly.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. The golden top comes from browning of milk proteins and sugars in the hot oven. Pulling the dish too early leaves the top pale, while leaving it too long can dry or scorch the crumbs.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, milk, bread, butter. 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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