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Lyonnaise Potatoes
Take one pint of cold potatoes; one tablespoon of butter; one tablespoon of minced onion; one tablespoon of chopped parsley; salt and pepper to taste. The potatoes should be rather underdone to produce the best results. Cut them into dice, and season with salt and pepper. Fry the onion in the butter until yellow, add the potato, and stir with a fork until both sides are of a nice brown, being careful not to break the potatoes. A little more butter may be required, as no vegetable absorbs so much butter as potatoes. When done, turn the potatoes out upon a hot dish, sprinkle the parsley over the top, and serve hot.
A straightforward skillet potato that depends almost entirely on the state of the potatoes going in. Everything else is seasoning.
- The hinge: cold, underdone potatoesBoiled potatoes taken off the heat while still slightly firm at the centre will hold their shape and brown; fully soft ones collapse into hash. Chill them thoroughly, ideally overnight, before dicing.
- A pint of potatoesMeasured by volume, not weight — about two cups of diced cooked potato, roughly two medium potatoes, or somewhere around 10 to 12 oz. Serves two as a side.
- Butter and heatButter alone at browning temperature will scorch. Cooks who want the same flavour without the burnt milk solids use clarified butter, or add a spoonful of neutral oil to the pan.
- Onion first, but not too long"Until yellow" means softened and just beginning to colour, three to four minutes over medium heat — not caramelised. If it goes dark before the potatoes are in, it will be bitter by the end.
- Stirring with a forkThe instruction is deliberate: a fork lifts and turns without mashing. Better still, leave the potatoes undisturbed for several minutes at a stretch so a crust forms, then turn once or twice. Constant agitation gives you steam, not brown.
- Pan choiceCast iron or heavy carbon steel, wide enough that the dice sit in a single layer. Crowding is the usual reason home versions come out pale and soft.
- SeasoningSalt the diced potatoes before they hit the pan, as written, but hold back a little to finish — some will be lost to the butter.
"À la lyonnaise" in French cookery means, almost without exception, cooked with onions, after the cuisine of Lyon and, by the traditional explanation, the sweet onions grown in the surrounding country. The phrase attaches itself to potatoes above all, and by the late nineteenth century the dish had been thoroughly naturalised in English and American kitchens as a way of using yesterday's boiled potatoes — a matter of thrift dressed in a French name, which is exactly the register a book like this one aimed at. The Butterick Publishing Company sold dress patterns and women's magazines before it sold cookbooks, and its recipes reflect that readership: competent household cooking, economical, with just enough continental vocabulary to lift a plate of fried potatoes into something you could name on a menu.