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Fried Potatoes and Onions

A simple fried dish of sliced onions and thin potato slices 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

Fry the onions

  1. Heat butter and oil in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Add sliced onions and fry until soft.

Cook the potatoes

  1. Add cold potato slices and toss occasionally until they turn a nice yellow color.

  2. Stir in chopped parsley, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Shake the pan well to mix everything thoroughly.

  4. 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
Cold cooked potato slices hold their shape and brown lightly in the hot fat.
Onions
Frying softens them and turns their natural sugars into a mellow sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor while helping the pan surfaces brown the vegetables.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the fried butter and onions.

The step that matters

Add cold potato slices and toss occasionally. Cold potatoes are firmer and less likely to break apart, and tossing only occasionally lets their surfaces contact the hot pan and brown rather than steam.

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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