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. It consists of upper and lower halves which fit into each other so that the whole vessel with its contents can be inverted during cooking.
History The dish is generally credited with having been created during the reign of Napoleon III by the chef Adolphe Dugléré, a leading pupil of Carême. Dugléré was head chef at the Café Anglais, the most fashionable restaurant in Paris during the Second Empire, and reputedly named the dish for one of the grandes cocottes (society beauties) 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 (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 (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 tournedos steaks, such as Armenonville (garnished with creamed morels; deglazed with Madeira and veal gravy), (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 ).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 (roast loin, with creamed spinach and Madeira sauce).Bickel, p. 539
Variants Pommes Darphin – as for pommes Anna but with the potatoes cut into juliennes rather than slices.Saulnier, p. 210 Also known as pommes Nana. Pommes Massenet – as for pommes Anna, but the layers of potato are alternated with previously sautéed mushrooms.Verdon, p. 264 Pommes Mireille – as for pommes Anna, but with a layer of black truffles and a layer of sliced artichoke hearts between the layers of potato.Saulnier, p. 211 Pommes Monselet – as for pommes Anna, but with layers of mushrooms and truffles in between the layers of sliced potato.Escoffier, p. 1044 Pommes Salardaise – as for pommes Anna, but the layers of potato are alternated with sliced black truffles. Pommes Voisin – as for pommes Anna, with grated cheese over each layer of potato.Escoffier, p. 1046
See also List of foods named after people
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