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Garniture De Pommes Fondantes

A garnish of large olive-shaped potatoes cooked in fat, butter, and lemon, seasoned with sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Garniture De Pommes Fondantes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Peel and shape the potatoes into large olive shapes.

  2. Place them in a skillet with melted fat and cook gently, turning to color all sides.

  3. Once browned, drain on a cloth and press lightly to flatten without breaking.

Bake and serve

  1. Remove excess fat from the skillet and coat the bottom with melted butter.

  2. Arrange the potatoes in the skillet, side by side, and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 10-12 minutes, basting and turning them.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and serve in a vegetable dish.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dutch potatoes
Starch forms the tender, fluffy interior once cooked through in fat.
Melted veal kidney fat or lard
Conducts heat evenly and browns the potato surface through frying.
Butter
Adds richness and browning flavour during the final baking in the skillet.

The step that matters

Browning the potatoes in fat before baking. Gentle, even browning builds a crisp golden crust that holds the shape. Turning them often prevents scorching and uneven colour, and drying them well keeps the fat from spattering.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, parsley, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, parsley, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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