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Potatoes a LA Lyonnaise

Sautéed onions and cold boiled potatoes browned together, shaped like an omelet, then served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Potatoes a LA Lyonnaise

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and slice the onion thinly.

Cook

  1. In a pan, toss the onion in butter over medium heat until golden brown.

  2. Add the sliced cold boiled potatoes and toss until heated through and nicely browned.

  3. Shape the mixture against the side of the pan like an omelet.

  4. Let it take color, then turn it out onto a hot dish and serve.

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

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 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

Onion
Softens and turns sweet and golden as it browns in the butter, adding flavor to the dish.
Butter
Carries heat evenly and adds richness, helping the onion and potatoes brown.
Cold boiled potatoes
Form the body of the dish and crisp and brown on the hot pan surface.

The step that matters

Shape the mixture against the side of the pan like an omelet. Pressing the mixture into a compact cake gives the potatoes full contact with the hot pan, so the underside browns evenly rather than steaming and breaking apart.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Asparagusfits less well
  4. Leekfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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.

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