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Parisian Potatoes

A simple dish of boiled potatoes with onions, cooked in lard and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Parisian Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the potatoes and cut them into cubes.

  2. Slice the onion thinly.

Cook

  1. Melt the lard in a large saucepan or casserole.

  2. Add the onion and allow it to brown.

  3. Add the water, potatoes, and seasoning.

  4. Cook until the potatoes are tender.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot with the onion; you may drain the water or serve it as well.

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).

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 become tender and starchy as they cook in the water.
Lard
Fat that carries the heat and helps the onion brown and add richness.
Onion
Browns in the fat to add sweetness and savoury depth to the dish.

The step that matters

Allow the onion to brown. Browning onion in fat develops sweet, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Pale, undercooked onion tastes flat and raw, so it should be left in the hot lard until golden brown before the water goes in.

“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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