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Lyonnaise Potatoes II
Slice cold boiled potatoes to make two cups. Cook five minutes one and one-half tablespoons butter with one tablespoon finely chopped onion. Melt two tablespoons butter, season with salt and pepper, add potatoes, and cook until potatoes have absorbed butter, occasionally shaking pan. Add butter and onion, and when well mixed, add one-half tablespoon finely chopped parsley.
A straightforward Fannie Farmer-era sauté that works in two stages, in two pans, for a reason: the onion is softened separately so it never scorches while the potatoes brown.
- Two pans, not oneThe recipe reads oddly because it appears to be a two-vessel method: the onion sweats gently in 1½ tablespoons butter while the potatoes cook in a separate 2 tablespoons of butter. The two are combined only at the end.
- Start with genuinely cold potatoesBoiled potatoes must be fully cold, ideally refrigerated overnight, before slicing. Warm potatoes shed starch and break into mash the moment they meet the pan.
- "Cook until potatoes have absorbed butter"This is the hinge. It means roughly 10-15 minutes over medium heat, shaking rather than stirring, until the slices are coated and edged with gold. Turning them with a spoon will shatter them.
- Heat levelMedium is right; too low and the potatoes steam and stick, too high and the butter browns past the point of flavour.
- Butter quantityThree and a half tablespoons total for two cups of potato is generous by modern habit but correct here, since the dish depends on the potatoes drinking it in. Cutting it back gives dry, pale slices.
- Potato varietyWaxy potatoes hold their shape best. A floury baking potato boiled and chilled will still work but expect more breakage.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; two cups of sliced potato would serve about two as a side dish, or one as a breakfast plate.
Lyonnaise means "in the manner of Lyon," a shorthand that in French cookery signalled onions, the city and its region being traditionally associated with onion cookery. The title's "II" indicates that the book offers more than one route to the same dish. The recipe is fundamentally a leftovers dish, a way of using cold boiled potatoes, and its two-pan technique is the difference between thrift and something worth serving.