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Lyonnaise Potatoes

A sautéed potato dish with butter, onions, salt, pepper, and optional parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Lyonnaise Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the chopped onion and cook until browned.

  3. Add the sliced cold boiled potatoes, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  4. Cook until the potatoes are browned, then serve hot.

  5. If desired, add chopped parsley for flavor.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 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. Potato + parsleytop 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

Butter
Adds fat for frying and rich flavor to the potatoes and onion.
Onion
Browns and sweetens as it cooks, adding savory depth to the dish.
Cold boiled potatoes
Form the body of the dish; their starch crisps and browns in the hot fat.

The step that matters

Cook until the potatoes are browned. Browning depends on direct contact with hot fat and enough space in the pan. Crowding or stirring too often steams the potatoes instead, leaving them soft and pale rather than golden and crisp.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, potato, pepper):

  1. Garlicfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celeryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, 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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