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Lyonnaise Potatoes
Put two ounces of butter into a frying pan, and when melted add two tablespoons of chopped onions; fry until slightly colored, add a tablespoon more butter and a quart of cold boiled potatoes, peeled and sliced; sprinkle with pepper and salt, and stir gently until thoroughly heated.
— Miss Florence I. Britt
A straightforward skillet dish whose only real demand is that the potatoes be cold, firm and already cooked. Everything else is a matter of heat management.
- Quantities in modern termsTwo ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons (half a stick); the extra tablespoon brings it to 5. A quart of sliced cold potatoes is roughly 1 1/2 lb of boiled potatoes, about 4 medium — enough for four as a side.
- Cook the potatoes the day beforeThe recipe assumes leftovers, and that is genuinely the point. Freshly boiled potatoes are too wet and fragile to slice cleanly and will break into mash in the pan. Boil them whole in their skins, cool completely, then peel and slice about 1/4 inch thick.
- Potato varietyWaxy or all-purpose potatoes hold their slices; a floury russet will crumble. Yukon Gold or red-skinned potatoes are the safe choice.
- Don't stir as much as it says"Stir gently until thoroughly heated" undersells what makes the dish worth eating. Lay the slices in a single layer over medium-high heat and leave them alone for several minutes at a time so they brown, turning only two or three times in 10-15 minutes.
- The onionsTwo tablespoons of chopped onion is modest by current taste; a larger quantity, up to half a medium onion, sliced thin rather than chopped, suits modern palates. Fry them only until translucent and pale gold; browned onions will scorch during the long potato stage.
- PanCast iron or heavy carbon steel, wide enough that the slices are not stacked. A crowded pan steams instead of browning.
- FinishingSalt at the end as well as the beginning, and a handful of chopped parsley appears in many versions of the dish, though this one omits it.
The name means "in the manner of Lyon," the French city whose cooking is closely associated with onions — a garnish or dish labeled lyonnaise in nineteenth-century kitchen French could generally be taken to contain them. French menu terms carried prestige in American hotel and restaurant cooking of the later 1800s, and dishes of this kind made use of the cold boiled potatoes a household might have left from an earlier meal. Its appearance in a community collection like this one, contributed under a neighbour's name, suggests the term had found its way into plain home cooking.