Pommes Anna, or Anna potatoes, is a classic French dish of sliced, layered potatoes cooked in a very large amount of melted butter. There are several variants of the dish, containing, in addition to potatoes and butter, other ingredients, which may include artichoke hearts, black truffles, mushrooms and cheese.
Ingredients
The recipe calls for firm-fleshed potatoes and butter only. Potatoes are peeled and sliced very thin. The slices, salted and peppered, are layered into a pan (see below), generously doused with
clarified butter, and baked until they form a cake. Then the cake is flipped every ten minutes until the outside is golden and crisp. At the end of the cooking period, the dish is unmoulded and forms a cake in diameter and about high.
[Beck and Child, pp. 515–521] It is then cut in wedges and served immediately on a hot plate, usually accompanying cooked meat.
A special double baking dish made of copper called la cocotte à pommes Anna is still manufactured in France for the cooking of this dish.
History
The dish is generally credited with having been created during the time of
Napoleon III by the chef Adolphe Dugléré, a pupil of Carême, when Dugléré was head chef at the Café Anglais, the leading Paris restaurant of the 19th century, where he reputedly named the dish for one of the
grandes cocottes of the period.
There is disagreement about which beauty the dish was named after: the actress
Anna Judic or
Anna Deslions.
[ In Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Simone Beck and Julia Child comment that to many people, " pommes Anna is the supreme potato dish of all time".][
]
Traditionally, Pommes Anna accompanies sirloin of beef à la française (roast and garnished with tartlets filled with spinach purée)[Bickel, p. 318] or Cavour (sautéed, blanched beef marrow slices on top),[Bickel, p. 319] or du couvent (browned, braised in white wine and demi-glace mixed with truffle, ox tongue, mushroom strips and peas).[Bickel, p. 320] The dish is also a traditional accompaniment to Beef tenderloin steaks, such as Armenonville (garnished with creamed morels; deglazed with madeira wine and veal gravy), à la basque (with stuffed tomatoes, and creamed celery),[Bickel, p. 332] carignan (with artichoke hearts and asparagus),[Bickel, p. 334] and Louis XV (garnished with a tartlet filled with minced mushrooms with a truffle slice on top and served with tournedos covered with sauce à la diable).[Bickel, p. 338] Pommes Anna is also served with sautéed chicken dishes such as Rivoli (deglazed with sherry, demi-glace and tomato purée, with chopped truffles),[Bickel, p. 385] and with veal, such as longe de veau à la française (roast loin, with creamed spinach and Madeira sauce).[Bickel, p. 539]
Variants
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Pommes Darphin – as for pommes Anna but with the potatoes cut into Julienning rather than slices.
[Saulnier, p. 210] Also known as pommes Nana.[
]
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Pommes Massenet – as for pommes Anna, but the layers of potato are alternated with previously sautéed mushrooms.
[Verdon, p. 264]
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Pommes Mireille – as for pommes Anna, but with a layer of and a layer of sliced artichoke hearts between the layers of potato.
[Saulnier, p. 211]
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Pommes Monselet – as for pommes Anna, but with layers of mushrooms and truffles in between the layers of sliced potato.
[Escoffier, p. 1044]
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Pommes Salardaise – as for pommes Anna, but the layers of potato are alternated with sliced black truffles.
[
]
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Pommes Voisin – as for pommes Anna, with grated cheese over each layer of potato.
[Escoffier, p. 1046]
See also
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List of foods named after people
Sources
