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Potatoes a LA Lyonnaise

Sautéed onions and buttered sliced potatoes seasoned with pepper and sea salt, finished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potatoes a LA Lyonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Add the chopped onion and sauté for 10 minutes.

Cook the potatoes

  1. Slice the cooked potatoes.

  2. Sprinkle the sliced potatoes with pepper and salt.

  3. Brown the potatoes in the butter.

Serve

  1. Sprinkle the chopped parsley just before serving.

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

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

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

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

  3. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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 brown in the butter to develop a crisp, golden surface.
Butter
Carries the heat and adds richness, helping the potatoes brown and carry flavour.
Onion
Softens as it sautés, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the potatoes.

The step that matters

Brown the potatoes in the butter. Potatoes need enough heat and space to brown rather than steam. Browning comes from surface sugars and starches reacting at high heat, so crowding or too low a heat leaves them pale and soft.

Swap the onion

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

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

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