No. 2794

Potatoes, Lyonnese

Pommes de Terre Lyonnaise

Pare some cooked potatoes into cylinders one inch in diameter, cut them three-sixteenths of an inch thick and saute in butter; mince finely one medium-sized onion; fry it in butter, and when nicely colored mix in the sauted potatoes and season with salt and pepper; toss them again for a few moments, drain off the butter and dress.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's version is the classic Lyonnaise: cooked potatoes sliced and sauteed separately from the onion, then married at the end. The discipline is in keeping the two elements apart until the last moment.

Start with cold cooked potatoesBoil waxy potatoes in their skins the day before, or at least several hours ahead, and chill them. Warm freshly boiled potatoes crumble the instant they hit butter.
The cylinder trickParing the potatoes into one-inch cylinders before slicing appears to be for uniform round slices on the plate, presumably a matter of restaurant presentation. Slicing peeled potatoes straight across works much the same and wastes far less.
Three-sixteenths of an inchAbout 5 mm — thick enough to hold together, thin enough to crisp at the edges. A mandoline or a steady knife; anything much thinner will break up in the pan.
Two pans, not oneThe onion goes in its own butter and is cooked to a proper light brown; the potatoes are sauteed to color on their own. Cooking them together gives steamed onion and pale potatoes.
Toss, do not stirMove the pan rather than a spoon once the potatoes have colored. Stirring is what turns Lyonnaise potatoes into hash.
Draining the butterThe instruction to drain off the butter before dressing is explicit in the original, presumably to avoid serving the potatoes in pooled fat. Expect to use a generous amount of butter and lose some of it.
Quantities and yieldThe original specifies one medium-sized onion but no weight of potatoes and no yield. One medium onion suits roughly 1.5 to 2 lb of potatoes, serving four as a side.

A Little History

The name simply means "in the style of Lyon," and in nineteenth-century French cooking a la lyonnaise was shorthand for onions — Lyon's surrounding country was known for them, and the tag attached to everything from tripe to sauces to potatoes. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a compendium of the grande cuisine he had cooked professionally for decades, which is why a dish this simple is written with the precision of a kitchen order: cylinders of a stated diameter, slices of a stated thickness, so that a dozen plates leaving the pass looked identical. The potato section of the book runs to dozens of numbered preparations, a reminder of how much a well-run restaurant kitchen was expected to do with a cheap vegetable.