Greg's gratin dauphinois

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Gratin dauphinois is a rather pompous title for what the French also call gratin de pommes de terre, or potato gratin. The recipe is simplicity itself: put raw potato slices in an oven-proof dish, cover with milk and cook for about 50 minutes.

That's where the simplicity ends. To get good results, many complications arise. On 6 November 2007 I did some investigation, using recipes from four books:

• The cook's companion by Stephanie Alexander, published by Lantern press. This is an Australian book about which I'm somewhat ambivalent. She calls it “potato gratin”.
• La cuisine du marché, by Paul Bocuse, published by Flammarion. Here it's called gratin dauphinois.
• Bonniers Kokbok, published by Albert Bonniers Förlag, which refers to it as “Frask Potatisgratäng”.
• Time-Life's The cooking of provincial France, which I have in both English and German. There are some differences. The English book calls it “pommes de terre dauphinoise” or “scalloped potatoes with cheese”. I wouldn't recognize the latter name. The German book calls it “Kartoffelschüssel mit Käse”, which I wouldn't recognize either, or Pommes de Terre Dauphinoises, which I would.

Interestingly, La cuisine de Madame Saint-Ange (Larousse) didn't include a recipe.

These four books disagree about almost every point:

• How thick should the slices of potato be? Bocuse says “thin”. Bonniers says ½ cm. Time-Life says “1/8 inch slices”, and the German translation represents this as 3 mm, which is close enough. Alexander says “slice potatoes thinly (but not too thinly)”.
• How much potato per serving? Bocuse recommends 500 g for 6 people (83 g per helping). Bonnier recommends 800 g (133 g per helping) Time-Life recommends 2½ lbs (190 g per helping) or 1¼ kg (which translates to 2¾ lbs, or 210 g per helping) for 6 people. Alexander recommends 8 potatoes for 8 people. In the following discussion I'll guess that that means 1 kg, which also implies 125 g per helping.
• What kind of potatoes? Bonniers recommends floury potatoes, Alexander recommends waxy potatoes, Time-Life recommends “boiling type” or “festkochend”, and Bocuse stipulates Dutch potatoes.
• Just milk or a mixture of milk and cream? Time-Life uses only milk. So does Bocuse, but he adds an egg (see below), and at the end of the recipe he writes “the composition can be enriched with a portion of thick cream”. Alexander wants a ratio of one portion cream, two portions milk, and Bonniers want 50% milk, 50% (whipping) cream.
• How much milk and cream in total? Bocuse recommends ½ litre (1:1 by weight relationship milk to potatoes), and stipulates that the liquid should just cover the potatoes. Bonnier uses 400 ml (1:2 ratio), Time-Life recommends 1¼ “cups”, even in German, where that kind of unit isn't known, a ratio of probably 1:3.5, and Alexander recommends 600 ml (at a guess, a ratio of 3:4).
• Garlic, yes or no? Yes, in all cases, and in each case it's measured in cloves. For the sake of guesswork, I'll assume that it's a 5g clove. Bocuse doesn't specify the quantity, but it only to rub the dish before putting in the potatoes. Time-Life want one clove, about 0.5% or 0.4% of the weight of the potatoes, depending on whether you're speaking English or German. Alexander wants 2 cloves, about 1.0% of the weight of potatoes. Bonniers want 2 cloves, about 1.25% of the weight of the potatoes.
• Should there be cheese in the gratin? Purists argue that this is sacrilege, but most recipes agree that there should be. Bocuse uses 125 g of grated gruyère (1:4 ratio to weight of potatoes), Time-Life uses 1½ cups of “Swiss” cheese, whatever that may be, Bonniers use 1 dl (100 ml) of unspecified cheese. Only Alexander doesn't use cheese.
• What else? All use pepper and salt, of course, and also butter to both wipe the dish and also on top. Bocuse and Alexander use nutmeg, though Alexander notes that it's optional. Bocuse is particularly fussy: he boils the milk first and lets it cool down, then beats an egg and passes it through a sieve and adds it to the milk.

My recipe

I used 750 g of potatoes, which proved to be barely more than enough for 3 people; more importantly, though, it didn't quite make 4 layers of potato in my oven dish (470 cm²), and the 500 ml of liquid I used was barely enough to cover the potatoes, so next time I'll use the quantities shown in the recipe, which should be enough for 4 people.

Ingredients

Method

1. Heat the oven to 180°
2. Peel the potatoes and slice them into 4 mm slices with an electric slicer, which cuts evenly.
3. Melt some of the butter fat in an oven proof dish with an area of about 500 cm² then Lay a layer of potato slices on the bottom, overlapping slightly. Salt, pepper and add a little pressed garlic. Repeat until all the potato and garlic is used up. The quantities should give four layers.
4. Mix milk and cream and blend; the cream I get here is lumpy otherwise. Pour over the potatoes, which should be just covered.
5. Spread butter fat flakes over the surface and bake in the oven for 50 minutes, or until the surface is nicely browned.