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 ...

– 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'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, ...

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-Antoi ...

(1907) recommends frying the potatoes and the onions separately in butter before combining them and sprinkling them with chopped parsley.

Marcel Boulestin Xavier Marcel Boulestin (1878 – 20 September 1943) was a French chef, restaurateur, and the author of cookery books that popularised French cuisine in the English-speaking world. Born in Poitiers in France (Poitou region), Boulestin tried a ...

'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

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History and ingredients

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