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Potatoes, Bretonne
Finely chop one good-sized white onion and lightly fry in a saucepan with half ounce butter for three minutes; add one tablespoon flour, gently stir while cooking for five minutes; moisten with a pint hot white broth and thoroughly mix; then add six medium-sized, peeled, raw potatoes cut into even quarters. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper; lightly mix, cover the pan and let slowly simmer for thirty-five minutes. Remove, pour into a hot dish and serve.
A flour-thickened onion braise for potatoes, closer to a stew than a side of boiled potatoes. The whole dish stands or falls on the roux being cooked out before the broth goes in.
- Cook the flour properlyThe five minutes of stirring after the flour is added is not filler — it cooks out the raw starch taste and keeps the sauce from turning pasty. Keep the heat low so the flour stays blond rather than browning.
- White brothA light, unbrowned stock: veal or chicken made from bones that were never roasted. Any low-sodium chicken stock works; avoid dark beef stock, which changes the dish entirely.
- Seasoning is heavy by modern standardsA full teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of white pepper for a pint of broth assumes unsalted homemade stock. With commercial stock, salt at the end instead.
- Potato choiceUse a waxy or all-purpose potato — Yukon Gold, red-skinned, or similar. A floury baking potato will collapse into the sauce over thirty-five minutes.
- TimingThirty-five minutes at a bare simmer suits large quarters of a firm potato. Start testing at 20 minutes; they are done when a knife slides in with no resistance at the centre.
- Watch the bottom of the panA floured liquid this thick scorches easily once the potatoes absorb some of it. A heavy pan, the lowest heat that maintains a simmer, and an occasional gentle stir with a flat spoon.
- YieldSix potatoes and a pint of sauce serve four as a side, three as a supper dish. Finish with chopped parsley if you want it to look like anything.
In classical French kitchen usage à la bretonne signals onions plus a thickened white sauce — the same logic behind the haricot beans in onion sauce conventionally served as the bretonne garnish with a leg of mutton. The name points at the region, though the flour-and-butter thickening, the unbrowned white broth, and the instruction to serve in a hot dish all belong to the codified professional repertoire rather than to farmhouse cooking. Its appearance in an "international" collection is typical of the period, when American cookbook compilers borrowed the French vocabulary of garnitures such as bretonne, lyonnaise and duchesse.