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Lyonnaise Potatoes
Boil in a quart of water with a teaspoon salt four medium, sound potatoes for thirty-five minutes. Drain and let cool off; slice them into the thickness of a silver dollar. Melt an ounce butter or good fat in a frying pan, add one good-sized, sound, white, sliced onion, and gently cook it for three minutes, lightly mixing meanwhile. Then add the potatoes. Season with a light teaspoon salt and three saltspoons white pepper, well sprinkled over the potatoes, then cook for seven minutes, gently tossing them once in a while. Give the potatoes a nice omelet form, then let them get a very good golden colour for about six minutes. Turn on a hot dish, besprinkle with half teaspoon chopped parsley and serve.
A straightforward pan of potatoes and onions, but the original's timings assume a coal range and a heavy iron skillet. Two things carry the dish: the potatoes must be cold and firm before they hit the fat, and the pan must be hot enough to colour them rather than steam them.
- Cook the potatoes aheadThirty-five minutes may be longer than modern potatoes need, especially if you cut them. Boil until a knife just meets resistance, roughly 20-25 minutes for medium waxy potatoes, then cool completely — refrigerating them overnight is better still, as cold slices hold their shape in the pan.
- Potato typeThe recipe does not specify, but waxy or all-purpose potatoes (Yukon Gold, red-skinned) slice cleanly and brown well. Russets crumble when tossed.
- Silver dollar thicknessA silver dollar of the period was roughly a tenth of an inch thick, so slice a shade under 1/8 inch; thinner and they break up, thicker and they may not brown through in the time given.
- An ounce of butter is not enoughOne ounce is 2 tablespoons, which was generous when pans were seasoned iron. For four potatoes in a modern pan, use 3-4 tablespoons of butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil so it does not blacken during the browning stage.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three of them is 3/4 teaspoon of white pepper — assertive by current taste. Start with half that and adjust at the table.
- Heat and timingCook the onion over medium heat only until translucent, then raise the heat once the potatoes go in. The seven minutes of tossing is for heating through; the final six minutes is where the crust forms, and it needs a genuinely hot pan and no stirring.
- "A nice omelet form"Shape the potatoes into a cake in the pan, as an omelette is shaped, and leave it undisturbed to set a crust before sliding or inverting it onto the platter.
- YieldFour medium potatoes serve two generously or three alongside a roast or steak.
"Lyonnaise" is simply French for "in the manner of Lyon," and in professional kitchen shorthand it has long meant onions — Lyon and the surrounding Rhône country were associated with onion cookery, and the label attaches to everything from these potatoes to lyonnaise sauce, a reduction of wine, vinegar and onion. The recipe carries the marks of its period: the precise ounces, the saltspoons, the instruction to shape the potatoes into an "omelet form" and turn them onto a hot dish. Its appearance in a section called The World's Kitchen reflects a period habit of treating French restaurant cooking as the common international language of the table, with regional French names used as a kind of technical vocabulary.