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Eggplant, Lyonnaise
Peel and cut an eggplant in half-inch-square pieces, lift them up and drain on a cloth. Cut a medium onion in half, then finely slice it and fry in frying pan with two tablespoons melted butter for six minutes, occasionally stirring meanwhile, then add eggplant. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper and slowly cook for fifteen minutes. Pour in a tablespoon vinegar and half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, toss well, cook for two minutes, dress on a hot, deep dish and serve.
A short, honest side dish: onion softened in butter, eggplant cooked down with it, finished sharp with vinegar. Two details in the original are worth adjusting.
- Lyonnaise means onionIn French kitchen shorthand, à la lyonnaise signals sliced onion cooked in butter. The onion is not a background note here — slice it thin and give it the full six minutes so it is limp and sweet before the eggplant goes in.
- Drain, and salt while you do itThe instruction to lift the cubes and drain them on a cloth may stand in for a salting step. Toss the cubes with a teaspoon of salt, leave them 30 minutes in a colander, then blot dry; they will absorb less butter and hold their shape.
- The pepper is heavyHalf a teaspoon of pepper for one eggplant reads as very aggressive to modern palates, and if you have salted the eggplant already the additional teaspoon of salt will be too much. Season to taste at the end instead.
- Butter and the panTwo tablespoons is scant for a whole eggplant, which drinks fat. Use a wide skillet so the cubes sit in a single layer, and add a little more butter or oil if the pan goes dry before the fifteen minutes are up.
- "Slowly cook"Medium-low, with the cubes turned every few minutes. Fifteen minutes is right if the pieces are truly half-inch; they should collapse to creaminess rather than brown hard. Cover the pan for the first half if they are stubborn.
- The vinegarA tablespoon of plain white or cider vinegar, added off the boil and cooked just two minutes so the harshness burns off but the acidity stays. This is what keeps the dish from tasting merely of butter.
- ParsleyHalf a teaspoon is a garnish rather than a flavour. A tablespoon of chopped flat-leaf parsley is more in keeping with how the dish is served now.
- YieldOne medium eggplant serves two to three as a side. The "hot, deep dish" matters: the mixture is loose and cools fast, so warm the serving bowl.
Eggplant reached French cooking through the Mediterranean south and was still treated with some suspicion in northern Europe well into the nineteenth century. The lyonnaise tag is one of the standard garnish names codified in professional French kitchens of the period — Lyon's reputation for onions is generally said to have given its name to any dish built on them, from potatoes to tripe to this — and cookbooks used such labels as a compact instruction rather than a claim of regional origin. The finishing splash of vinegar is the older habit here: a spoonful of vinegar off the heat to lift a buttery pan of vegetables.