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Lyonnaise Potatoes

A sautéed potato dish with butter, onion, parsley, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 skillet over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion and fry until yellow.

  3. Add the sliced potatoes, season with salt and pepper, and stir gently with a fork until they absorb the butter.

  4. Add the chopped parsley and vinegar, 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. 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

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and become tender while holding their shape when stirred gently.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that coats the potatoes and helps them brown in the pan.
Onion
Softens and turns sweet as it fries, adding savory flavor to the potatoes.
Vinegar
Adds a small amount of acidity that brightens the buttery, savory flavors.

The step that matters

Stir gently with a fork once the potatoes go in. Potato slices are fragile and break apart if handled roughly. Gentle stirring coats them in butter without tearing them, so they stay in distinct pieces and cook evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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