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Fried Potatoes and Onions

A sauté of sliced onions and thinly sliced potatoes cooked in butter and oil, finished with parsley, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Fried Potatoes and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a frying pan, heat the butter and oil over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onions and fry until they are soft.

  3. Add the thinly sliced potatoes to the pan.

  4. Toss the potatoes occasionally until they turn a nice yellow color.

  5. Stir in the chopped parsley, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  6. Shake the pan well to mix everything together, then 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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 and turn golden and tender as they fry.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, adding savory depth to the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps the vegetables brown in the pan.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the fried potatoes and onions.

The step that matters

Toss the potatoes occasionally until they turn a nice yellow color. Cooking over medium heat with occasional tossing lets the potato slices brown evenly on their surfaces without burning or sticking, while the interior cooks through.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, parsley, pepper, 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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