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Potatoes Au Lard
Cut into small squares two ounces salt pork and one white onion, place both in a saucepan with a teaspoon butter and brown for ten minutes, lightly stirring meanwhile; add six medium, peeled and washed raw potatoes, cut into half-inch squares, and one bay leaf; moisten with a half pint broth. Season with two saltspoons salt and half teaspoon pepper, lightly mix, cover the pan and boil for five minutes, then set the pan in the hot oven for forty minutes. Remove, dress on a hot vegetable dish and serve.
A one-pan French braise of potatoes in broth and salt pork, finished in the oven. The measurements are pre-standard but all convert cleanly.
- The hinge: keep it coveredThe potatoes cook in only a cup of liquid. The recipe calls for the lid during the five-minute boil and gives no instruction to remove it, so leave it on in the oven: the trapped steam finishes the potatoes while the bottom layer browns in the pork fat. Uncovering early risks the liquid boiling away before the potatoes are through.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two of them is half a teaspoon of salt. That is modest for six potatoes, and salt pork and broth both add more; taste at the end rather than salting up front.
- Half pint brothOne cup. Any unsalted or lightly salted beef or chicken stock works; a good homemade stock, with more body than a thin cube, gives the richer result this style of dish suits.
- "Hot oven"Period sources vary, but "hot" generally falls somewhere around 400-450F. Forty minutes at that heat in a covered pan will cook half-inch potato cubes well past firm; expect a soft result with edges beginning to break down rather than distinct cubes.
- Salt porkTwo ounces of salt pork, rinsed and diced, is the traditional choice. Unsmoked pancetta or a thick piece of unsmoked bacon substitutes well; smoked bacon changes the character of the dish noticeably.
- Potato choiceUse a waxy or all-purpose potato — Yukon Gold, red-skinned, or fingerling. A russet will break down into the broth and give you a coarse mash rather than braised potatoes.
- Pan and vesselA "saucepan" here needs to go from stovetop to oven, so use a lidded Dutch oven or heavy oven-safe skillet with a cover. Foil clamped tightly over a skillet will do.
- Yield and finishingServes four as a side. Fish out the bay leaf before serving, and a scatter of parsley at the end is in keeping with the period even though the recipe does not call for it.
"Au lard" simply means "with pork fat" — in French kitchen usage lard is salt pork or bacon, not the rendered fat English speakers call lard. Pommes de terre au lard belongs to the everyday French bourgeois repertoire: a few ounces of cured pork, an onion, a bay leaf and whatever stock was in the pot, used to make a potful of potatoes worth eating. The technique — brown the fat and aromatics, add the vegetable, moisten barely, cover, finish in the oven — leaves the potatoes to cook largely unattended. The instruction to "dress on a hot vegetable dish" suggests a setting in which a separate warmed dish for each vegetable was routine rather than fussy.