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Lyonnaise Potatoes No. 2
3 medium sized boiled potatoes 1 small onion 2 sprigs parsley 2 tablespoons butter 1/4 teaspoon salt Put the butter, chopped parsley and grated onion into a double boiler. When the butter is melted, slice, and add the potatoes, and also the salt. When thoroughly heated through, serve.
A gentle, buttery variant on lyonnaise potatoes — this version steams rather than fries, so the texture depends entirely on how the potatoes are handled.
- The hinge: cook the potatoes ahead and chill themBoiled potatoes sliced while hot will crumble into mash in the double boiler. Boil them whole in their skins the day before, refrigerate, then peel and slice about 1/4 inch thick so the rounds hold together.
- A double boiler, not a skilletThis is not the browned, crusty lyonnaise of a restaurant griddle. The gentle heat of a double boiler only warms the potatoes through in the seasoned butter, giving something closer to a buttered potato salad served hot. Expect no colour.
- Grated onionGrating a raw onion releases a great deal of juice along with the pulp, which is what carries the flavour here. Use a box grater over a bowl and add the liquid too; a fine mince will taste sharper and stay crunchy, since nothing in this method really cooks the onion.
- Butter quantityTwo tablespoons for three potatoes is generous by modern habit but correct for the dish — the butter is the sauce. Unsalted butter plus the specified 1/4 teaspoon salt is about right; with salted butter, taste before adding more.
- TimingThe recipe says only "when thoroughly heated through." Reckon on roughly fifteen to twenty minutes over simmering water, turning once or twice with a spatula rather than stirring. Longer will not improve it and will break the slices down.
- YieldThree medium potatoes serve two as a main-plate portion or three or four as a side. The recipe scales cleanly, though a crowded double boiler heats unevenly.
- ServingAdd the parsley at the start as written if you want its flavour infused into the butter, but a second pinch of fresh chopped parsley at the table restores the colour the steaming dulls.
Pommes lyonnaise — potatoes and onions cooked in butter, named for Lyon, a city long associated in French cooking shorthand with onions — appears in American cookbooks by the late nineteenth century and was quickly domesticated. The classic version fries parboiled slices until browned and folds in softened onion; this "No. 2" strips the browning away entirely, and the numbering suggests a book that catalogued two or more versions of the same idea at different levels of effort and richness.