Lyonnaise potatoes – in French pommes de terre sautées à la lyonnaise – are potatoes, boiled and then sliced and shallow-fried, served together with fried onions.
History and ingredients
The culinary term ''à la lyonnaise'' – in the style of
Lyon
Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of t ...
– which is applied to numerous French dishes, generally means that onions are a key part of the recipe. Potatoes ''à la lyonnaise'' are
sautéed and served with fried onions. All five recipes mentioned below, dating from 1806 to 1970, call for the potatoes to be boiled, peeled and sliced, before frying.
André Viard, in ''
Le Cuisinier impérial'' (1806), stipulates that the potatoes are to be sliced and covered with onion purée before being fried in butter and served with sliced onions that have been gently simmered in water. By the mid-19th century, recipes specified that the onions, as well as the potatoes, should be fried. In
Alexis Soyer
Alexis Benoît Soyer (4 February 18105 August 1858) was a French chef who became the most celebrated cook in Victorian England. He also tried to alleviate suffering of the Irish poor in the Great Irish Famine (1845–1849), and contributed a p ...
's recipe (1846) the onions are fried in butter and the sliced boiled potatoes are added to the pan. Soyer adds chopped
parsley
Parsley, or garden parsley (''Petroselinum crispum'') is a species of flowering plant in the family Apiaceae that is native to the central and eastern Mediterranean region (Sardinia, Lebanon, Israel, Cyprus, Turkey, southern Italy, Greece, Por ...
and lemon juice.
August Escoffier
Georges Auguste Escoffier (; 28 October 1846 – 12 February 1935) was a French chef, restaurateur and culinary writer who popularized and updated traditional French cooking methods. Much of Escoffier's technique was based on that of Marie-Ant ...
(1907) recommends frying the potatoes and the onions separately in butter before combining them and sprinkling them with chopped parsley.
Marcel Boulestin's recipe (1931) adds the onion raw to the pan in which the potatoes are frying.
Elizabeth David
Elizabeth David CBE (born Elizabeth Gwynne, 26 December 1913 – 22 May 1992) was a British cookery writer. In the mid-20th century she strongly influenced the revitalisation of home cookery in her native country and beyond with articles and bo ...
(1970) specifies frying the onions first and adding them to the frying potatoes when the latter are very nearly cooked. She recommends either butter or
beef dripping
Dripping, also known usually as beef dripping or, more rarely, as pork dripping, is an animal fat produced from the fatty or otherwise unusable parts of cow or pig carcasses. It is similar to lard, tallow and schmaltz.
History
It is used for ...
for frying both ingredients, and comments that the dish cooked in this way "bears little resemblance ... to the greasy mixture of unevenly browned potatoes and frizzled onions which usually passes for ''pommes lyonnaises''".
[David, pp. 251–252]
Notes
Sources
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See also
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Gratin
Gratin () is a culinary technique in which an ingredient is topped with a browned crust, often using breadcrumbs, grated cheese, egg or butter.Courtine, Robert J. (ed.) (2003) ''The Concise Larousse Gastronomique'' London: Hamlyn The term ma ...
, a French cooking method often used for potatoes
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Home fries
Home fries (US, Canada), house fries (US), American fries (US), fried potatoes (UK, Canada and regional US), Bratkartoffeln (German), bistro potatoes (southeastern US), or peasant potatoes are a type of basic potato dish made by pan- or skillet ...
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Lyonnaise cuisine
Lyonnaise cuisine refers to cooking traditions and practices centering on the area around the French city of LyonKindersley, Dorling (2011)''Ultimate Food Journeys: The World's Best Dishes and Where to Eat Them'' Penguin. p. 49. and historical ...
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List of potato dishes
The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop. It is the world's fourth-largest food crop, following rice, wheat and corn. The annual diet of an average global citizen in the first decade of the 21st century included about of potato. The potato was fir ...
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Rappie pie, the French-Canadian casserole made with shredded potatoes
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Sauce lyonnaise
Sauce lyonnaise is a compound or small French sauce of demi-glace, white wine, vinegar and onions served with small cuts of meat principally for left-overs.''Larousse Gastronomique'' (1961), Crown Publishers(''Translated from the French, Librair ...
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Potato dishes
French cuisine
Cuisine of Lyon
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