By Melissa Clark|With only two main ingredients, butter and potatoes, pommes Anna is a minimalist triumph of French technique. It is also one of the more challenging potato dishes to prepare and a true glory to any cook who makes it correctly. This guide is part of The New Essentials of French Cooking, the 10 definitive dishes every modern cook should master. Photographs by Francesco Tonelli for The New York Times. Videos by Alexandra Eaton and Shaw Lash.
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Why Master It?
Crisp frites, creamy gratins — the French do beautiful things with potatoes. And of all the magnificent potato dishes they make, pommes Anna is a classic, one that deserves more acclaim beyond France.
A buttery cake composed of paper-thin slices of potato, pommes Anna is similar to potato gratin in the way it is layered and baked. But unlike a gratin, which is lightly browned on top and creamy soft all the way through, pommes Anna emerges from the oven with a tender, slippery interior and a crunchy golden crust. It is a gorgeous contrast in textures.
To make it, the potatoes are trimmed into cylinders (to ensure a neat and attractive shape), sliced and then layered into a skillet sizzling with clarified butter. The potatoes are first cooked on top of the stove, to sear and brown them on the bottom, then moved to the oven to bake until the slices in the center turn soft. After baking, the pan is inverted onto a platter and presented as a stunning, burnished cake of crunchy potato petals.
You can dress up the basic recipe with an array of aromatics, cheeses and other vegetables. (Here, we’ve added an optional touch of garlic for a sweetly pungent contrast to the mild potatoes.) But pommes Anna doesn’t need it. The simple flavor of potato and butter is always a comfort, but the interplay of crisp and soft in this dish elevates it to another plane.
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A Brief History
Pommes Anna was created in the mid-19th century by the chef Adolphe Dugléré at Café Anglais in Paris. It was most likely named after Anna Deslions, one of the café’s grandes cocottes, who is said to have entertained an international coterie of princes and other dignitaries in a private salon above the dining room.
It’s telling that the dish was named for a glamorous courtesan. At that time, the potato still had a somewhat shady reputation among the French, having been considered poisonous for centuries after its introduction to Europe. It seemed delectable, yet just a little bit dangerous.
Potatoes arrived in France in the 16th century via the Spanish, who encountered them in what is now Colombia. The combination of the Northern French climate and the varieties of potato that were imported produced sad, watery tubers, thought to be toxic and unfit for human consumption. As late as 1748, potatoes were outlawed as crops in Paris. Because of their resemblance to the twisted limbs of lepers, the tubers were believed to cause the disease.
This began to change in the late 18th century through the efforts of Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, a French army officer who developed a taste for potatoes in a Prussian jail in Hamburg, where he was held captive after the Seven Years War.
Once he returned to France, Parmentier persuaded King Louis XVI to embrace the potato, both as a delicacy for the court when dressed up with cream and butter, and as cheap, reliable food for the poor when made into soups and gruels. This is why his name is linked to several French potato dishes, including hachis Parmentier, a baked dish of minced meat and mashed potatoes, and potage Parmentier, a puréed leek and potato soup.
Over the next centuries, potato preparations flourished, and potatoes soon became a necessary accompaniment to roasts, stews and sautéed dishes across the French repertoire de cuisine. Today, pommes Anna is considered to be among the finest of all French potato dishes, one skillful cooks take pride in making.
Above, “Harvesting Potatoes During the Flood of the Rhine in 1852” by Gustave Brion (1824-1877).
RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY
Equipment You'll Need
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Mandoline This very sharp slicing tool allows you to cut potatoes thinly and evenly. There’s no need to buy a pricey, stainless-steel model; an inexpensive plastic mandoline is fine and can go in the dishwasher. A sharp chef’s knife will get the job done, but a mandoline is made for this task.
Wirecutter, a product recommendations website owned by The New York Times Company, has a guide to the best mandolines.
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Skillets Traditionally, pommes Anna is cooked in a copper pan made specifically for that purpose. A skillet, either well-seasoned cast iron or heavy-duty nonstick, works just as well (or perhaps even better). Use one with a tightfitting cover. You’ll also need a slightly smaller skillet or a saucepan for pressing down the potatoes, which helps compress the cake and cook it evenly.
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Rimmed baking sheet It’s a good idea to place the skillet on a baking sheet before transferring it to the oven; it promotes even browning of the potatoes and catches any sizzling butter overflow.
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Offset spatula A small metal offset spatula, which has a long, thin, blunt blade (it is often used for frosting cakes), will help you remove the potatoes from the pan easily and in one piece. If you don’t have one, use the smallest spatula you have, or a butter knife.
Pommes Anna
By
Melissa Clark
By
Melissa Clark
- Yield 6 servings
Francesco Tonelli for The New York Times
This classic 19th-century French recipe brings out the best of the humble potato. In it, thin potato slices are layered into a skillet, basted in butter and baked. As they cook, the slices are compressed (under another skillet) so they hold together when unmolded. The potatoes on the exterior become brown and crisp, while the ones inside absorb the butter and turn satiny soft. The garlic isn't traditional, but it adds a pungent sweetness. Serve it as a classic and elegant side with roasted meat, or top it with fried eggs for an unusual vegetarian main course. You'll find a recipe for clarified butter here. This recipe is part of The New Essentials of French Cooking, a guide to definitive dishes every modern cook should master.
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French, Vegetables, Garlic, Potato, Brunch, Dinner, Lunch, Weekday, Main Course, Side Dish, Fall, Spring, Winter, Nut Free, Vegetarian, Christmas, Passover, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day
Ingredients
- 5 ½ to 7 pounds russet or all-purpose white potatoes, as needed
- ¾ cup clarified butter, melted
- Fine sea salt, as needed
- Freshly ground black pepper, as needed
- 2 to 4 garlic cloves, sliced paper-thin on a mandoline (optional)
Ingredient Substitution Guide
Preparation
- Heat oven to 450 degrees. Place a rack in the middle and set a rimmed baking sheet on top of it.
- Trim potatoes into cylinders, peeling any skin left after trimming. Using a mandoline or sharp knife, slice into 1/8-inch slices and blot dry with paper towels. You should have about 8 1/2 cups.
- In a heavy 10-inch cast-iron skillet, heat 3 tablespoons clarified butter over medium heat. When hot, carefully place 1 potato slice in the middle, then quickly place more slices around it, overlapping them clockwise to make a ring. Place a second ring to surround the first, going counterclockwise. Continue to the edge of the pan, alternating the direction in which the potato rings overlap. Sprinkle with a generous 1/4 teaspoon salt and pepper to taste, then drizzle with another 2 tablespoons butter.
- Create second layer of potatoes, just as you did the first. Dot a third of the garlic slices, if using, on top of this layer of potatoes. Season with salt and pepper; drizzle with butter.
- Continue layering potatoes, garlic, butter and salt until everything is used, making a dome of potatoes in the middle (they will sink as they cook). Occasionally shake skillet gently to ensure potatoes aren’t sticking. When finished, there should be enough butter that it can be seen bubbling up the sides of the skillet.
- Butter the bottom of a 9-inch pan and one side of a piece of foil. Push the pan down firmly on top of the potatoes to press them. Remove pan, then cover potatoes with the foil, buttered side down. Cover the foil with a lid. Set skillet on the baking sheet in oven and bake for 20 minutes.
- Remove skillet from oven, uncover and remove foil, and again press potatoes down firmly with the 9-inch pan. (Rebutter bottom of pan, if necessary, before you press down.) Return to oven and bake uncovered, until potatoes are tender and the sides are dark brown when lifted away from skillet, 20 to 25 minutes.
- Once more, remove skillet from oven and press potatoes down firmly with pan. Tip the skillet away from you to drain off the excess butter into a bowl (this can be reused for cooking), using the lid to keep the potatoes in place. Run a thin spatula around edge and bottom of skillet to loosen any slices stuck to the pan. Carefully turn out the potatoes onto a serving platter.
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Clarified Butter
By
Melissa Clark
By
Melissa Clark
- Yield 12 tablespoons, or 3/4 cup
Francesco Tonelli for The New York Times
Clarified butter can withstand heat without burning for a longer period and at a higher temperature than whole, nonclarified butter, making it ideal for pan-frying. Clarifying is a relatively simple process that takes just a few extra minutes. Essentially, you’re removing the water content and white milk solids from the butter. Expect to end up with about 25 percent less butter than you started with. Clarified butter keeps up to 1 month in the fridge. This recipe is part of The New Essentials of French Cooking, a guide to definitive dishes every modern cook should master.
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French, Butter, Easy, Quick
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)
Ingredient Substitution Guide
Preparation
- In a small pot, melt butter over low heat until bubbling and foaming subsides. Remove from heat, let cool slightly (don’t let butter resolidify), then skim any foam off the top.
- Line a sieve with cheesecloth or a clean dish towel and place over a heat-safe bowl or container. Leaving the white milk solids at the bottom of the pot, carefully pour or spoon yellow butter fat through the sieve and into the container. Let cool completely before refrigerating for up to 1 month.
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Techniques and Tips
What sets pommes Anna apart from other fried potato recipes is the refinement of its technique. All the tiny details, from the potatoes themselves to the way you slice them, may seem like a lot to absorb, but understanding them is essential to success.
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Choosing Ingredients
• For the potatoes, you can use either waxy boiling potatoes or starchy baking potatoes, depending on the texture you’re after. Or, if you’d like, you can use a combination of the two.
Julia Child recommends waxy, low-starch boiling potatoes, such as round white potatoes, red potatoes or Yukon golds. When you use these, the potato slices remain in distinct coins as opposed to merging into a uniform cake. These slippery potato pieces make it harder to cut through the cake neatly after unmolding. It can easily fall apart. But the buttery flavor and satiny texture of the waxy potatoes are marvelous, making up for the precarious presentation.
Russet baking potatoes make for a more compact cake; the starchy potato slices glue themselves into a uniform disk, one that slices into neat wedges. Texturally, the cake will have a crisp exterior with a mashed-potato-like heart. Because of their oblong shape, Russets are easier to work with than round potatoes, and you’ll have less waste.
• Use good butter: European-style butter with a high fat content (at least 82 percent) works best here because it contains less moisture than regular butter.
• You can make pommes Anna with regular butter, but it really is worth the few extra minutes it takes to make clarified butter first. It can take the heat for longer and at higher temperatures than butter that has not been clarified, so it will be less likely to burn.
• If you don’t want to clarify your butter, use a combination of oil and regular butter instead. You will end up with a more neutral and less buttery flavor, but the recipe will still work. (If you decide not to clarify, then it is especially important to use that high-fat, European-style butter.) Or you could use ghee, which is basically clarified butter in which the milk solids have been allowed to brown before being removed. It has a lightly caramelized, nutty flavor.
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Trimming the Potatoes and Using a Mandoline
• You need to trim the potatoes so they are about uniform in size, but don’t obsess over it. Using a paring or chef’s knife, remove the ends from each potato, then trim the sides so you end up with cylinders. It may seem like a lot of waste, especially if you are using round boiling potatoes, as opposed to oblong baking potatoes. But you can use the trimmings in mashed potatoes or soups.
• If you’d like, skip all the trimming and merely peel the potatoes. You won’t get as nice a presentation when you unmold the cake, but if that doesn’t bother you, you will save yourself a lot of work.
• The beauty of a mandoline is that it gives you very thin and even slices of potato, and does so very quickly. (In this recipe, you are aiming for pieces that are 1/8-inch thick.) Take extreme care when using a mandoline. The blade is sharp, and your hand is moving quickly; it is easy to slice your finger. It’s best to use the protective hand guard or gloves (the mesh gloves meant for shucking oysters work well).
• Once you have sliced the potatoes, it is essential to dry them so they don’t stick to the pan. To do so, place the slices between paper towels on a counter and press slightly. Let them sit in the open air and dry, about 5 to 10 minutes. (One way to save time is to let them sit out while you clarify the butter.)
• Never rinse the potato slices. It removes their starch, which is what helps them bind together into a cake.
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Assembling and Baking
• Before you begin layering the potatoes into the hot skillet, take a moment to place a baking sheet in the oven and preheat it. Later, you can place the skillet with the potatoes directly on the sheet, which will distribute the heat more evenly and catch any stray splashes of butter.
• Do not worry about forming a perfect circle of overlapping potatoes; it will look stunning even if a potato or two is not exactly aligned.
• Take care when adding the sliced potatoes to the hot butter. It can splatter and burn you. As long as you keep the pan at medium heat and add the slices quickly, you should be fine.
• For a compact cake with uniform thickness, use a second skillet or large saucepan to press down on the potatoes. Choose one that is large enough to cover most of the potatoes, and butter the bottom of the pan. Press down on the potatoes twice: once before the pan is transferred to the oven, and again after 20 minutes of baking.
• Remember what you’re looking for: a brown, crisp bottom in the pan. (The cake is flipped out of the pan, so the bottom will become the top.) Be careful that the bottom does not get too dark; you can peek, lifting up the cake slightly with an offset spatula or butter knife. You also want all of the potatoes to be cooked through, but to maintain a bit of texture (they should not be completely mushy or too soft to the touch). The top does not need to be golden as long as the potatoes are cooked through.
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Finishing and Serving
• Unmold the potatoes by running a spatula around the pan rim. Try to get the spatula under the potatoes, too, making sure they are not stuck to the bottom of the pan. Once you feel confident the potatoes can unmold, quickly turn the baking dish over onto a large serving platter. Or, if it makes you feel more comfortable, you can put a serving platter on top of the pan, and flip the pan over so the potato cake falls onto the platter. (Use oven mitts; the pan will be hot.) If some potato slices stick, remove them with the spatula and place them on top of the cake.
• If the dish looks like a disaster, follow Julia Child’s advice: Cover the cake with grated Gruyère, Parmesan or Cheddar cheese, dot with another spoonful of butter, then brown for a few seconds under the broiler. The cheese will mask any imperfections.
• You can make pommes Anna up to 4 hours ahead. After draining the excess butter from the pan and unmolding the cake, flip it back in the pan and cover it. Then gently place over a very low flame to crisp up again and reheat before serving.
Variations
Served plain, without embellishment, pommes Anna is a stunning dish. But after mastering its most basic form, you can take liberties with the recipe, adding cheeses, herbs and spices, and other vegetables.
- Cheese
- Vegetables
- Chiles, Herbs and Spices
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Adding cheese gives you a more intensely flavored dish with a melting, gooey center. And if you’re using low-starch potatoes like all-purpose white or Yukon gold, the cheese acts as an adhesive, helping to glue the cake together. Add 6 ounces Gruyère, Cheddar or Emmental cheese, grated, along with (or instead of) the garlic. Make sure the cheese doesn’t touch the bottom or sides of the pan or it can burn. You can also experiment with crumbled feta, blue cheese or goat cheese.
Cheese
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Potatoes aren’t the only vegetable that you can prepare in this fashion – other root vegetables and squashes will also work. Be sure to choose vegetables with a low moisture content so you get a crisp, browned exterior. Try sweet potatoes, turnips, winter squash, beets or rutabaga instead of (or in combination with) regular potatoes.
Vegetables
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For a bolder take on pommes Anna, substitute a thinly sliced shallot for the garlic, or add it along with the garlic. Ditto a sliced chile. You could also add a few tablespoons of chopped fresh herbs, such as tarragon, thyme, rosemary, sage or chives, or a dusting of nutmeg, cinnamon, cumin, fennel or other spices. Sprinkle herbs and spices on top of each layer of potatoes along with the salt and pepper.
Chiles, Herbs and Spices
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Photography
Food styling: Alison Attenborough. Prop styling: Beverley Hyde. Additional photography: Karsten Moran for The New York Times. Additional styling: Jade Zimmerman.
Video
Food styling: Chris Barsch and Jade Zimmerman. Art direction: Alex Brannian. Prop styling: Catherine Pearson. Director of photography: James Herron. Camera operators: Tim Wu and Zack Sainz. Editing: Will Lloyd and Adam Saewitz. Additional editing: Meg Felling.
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