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Potatoes D LA Proven^ale

Sautéed potatoes with butter, oil, lemon peel, parsley, green onions, nutmeg, flour, salt, pepper, lemon juice or vinegar, and optional anchovies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 D LA Proven^ale

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter with oil in a saucepan.

  2. Add lemon peel, parsley, green onions, nutmeg, flour, salt, and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Boil potatoes, peel while hot, and cut into 4 or 6 pieces.

  2. Add potatoes to saucepan and toss gently without boiling.

  3. Serve with lemon juice or vinegar, adding anchovies if desired.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the herbs and spices.
Oil
Keeps the butter from burning and helps the sauce coat the potatoes.
Flour
Lightly thickens the sauce so it clings to the potatoes.
Potatoes (in the method)
Form the body of the dish and soak up the sauce.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and oil.

The step that matters

Toss the potatoes gently without boiling. Vigorous stirring or boiling breaks the cut potato pieces apart and turns them mushy. Gentle tossing keeps them intact while they absorb the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, parsley, nutmeg, flour, 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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