Potatoes Cut to a Sixteenth of an Inch

A Pommes Anna sliced to a genuine sixteenth of an inch, layered in clarified butter and pressed until the base is one solid brown disc — forty minutes of somebody's hands, honestly stated.

September 4, 2026 By Rachel Anderson

Kitchen Kit

Pairing
Wine — A blanc de blancs Crémant or Champagne — the fat here is pure butter with nothing to cut it, and hard acid plus bubbles is the most direct answer there is, with the toasty lees note sitting comfortably against browned potato. Mixed drink — A Martini stirred properly cold and dry, with a lemon twist rather than an olive — cold, dilution and citrus oil scrub butterfat off the palate between slices, and brine would only add salt to a dish that is already salted between every layer. Teetotaler — Cold-brewed sencha — steeped in cold water for two hours rather than made hot and chilled, so it stays grassy instead of turning bitter — poured into a wine glass with a twist of lemon, where the astringency does exactly what the sparkling wine would against all that butter.

Tools
A mandoline with its guard actually in use — 1/16 inch is the entire dish and a knife will not hold that tolerance across three and a half pounds of potato, a 10 inch heavy ovenproof pan (cast iron or similar, straight-sided enough to turn out cleanly), a second slightly smaller heavy pan to sit on top as the weight, foil, a pastry brush, a couple of clean dry dish towels, a thin skewer, and a flat board or platter plus oven gloves for the invert

Ingredients · swaps in parentheses
Waxy potatoes — floury ones collapse into a mash between the layers instead of staying as distinct sheets, so this is not a swap so much as a different dish — clarified butter or ghee (plain melted butter works, but the milk solids in it catch and darken, so watch the top through the last ten minutes), kosher salt, and a postage-stamp piece of dried kombu if you are doing the butter trick below

Magic
The dish has three ingredients and one of them is butter, so put the flavor in the butter. While you are slicing, set the clarified butter over the lowest possible heat with a small piece of dried kombu and a wide strip of lemon peel and leave it there for twenty minutes, then lift both out before you start brushing. The kombu pushes glutamate into every layer, which reads not as seaweed but as depth, the thing you normally get from cheese or stock and cannot use here, and the lemon oil keeps 7 oz of butterfat from going flat by the third forkful. Nothing about the method changes — you brush the same butter onto the same slices. Keep the butter under a bare simmer, because boiled kombu turns bitter and slick. No kombu in the house? A bay leaf and the lemon peel alone, same twenty minutes, gets you a quieter version of the same idea.

Before you begin
Consistency beats speed on the mandoline: slices that wander between 1/32 and ⅛ inch will not compress into a single disc, and no amount of pressing later fixes it. Pat the slices dry and keep them dry — a wet potato sheds butter instead of taking it. Press down hard every few layers, and leave the weight in place the whole way through, because the air pockets you let stand are exactly where the disc will break. The invert is one committed motion after running a knife round the edge hesitate halfway and it tears. Then you have about thirty minutes before steam softens that brown underside, which is the only part of this anyone remembers.

A Pommes Anna, essentially, but the name earns its precision: potatoes sliced on a mandoline to a genuine sixteenth of an inch, layered dead flat in a heavy pan with clarified butter and salt and nothing else, pressed under a weight, and cooked until the underside is a solid, single brown disc. It’s the dish the menu itself admits takes forty minutes of somebody’s hands, and it’s honest about that rather than pretending precision this exact happens quickly. There’s no herb, no garlic, no shortcut — the whole dish is the cut.

Yield and time

Yield: 8 servings, written for a table of 8; one 10 inch pan per 8 guests
Active time: 45 minutes
Total time: 1 hour 20 minutes
Make-ahead window: Best cooked the day of; reheats acceptably but loses some crispness

Ingredients

Waxy potatoes, peeled — 3¼ lb
Clarified butter (ghee, or butter with the milk solids removed) — about 1 cup, melted
Kosher salt (Diamond Crystal) — about 1½ tablespoons, divided between layers

Method

Slice the potatoes on a mandoline to a genuine 1/16 inch thickness, working carefully and using the guard — this is the step the whole dish depends on; slices that vary in thickness cook unevenly and the layers won’t compress into a single, solid disc.
Pat the sliced potatoes dry with a clean towel; excess surface starch and moisture is what keeps the layers from sealing to each other properly.
Brush a heavy, ovenproof pan generously with clarified butter, then lay potato slices in a tight, overlapping circular pattern, brushing each layer with more butter and a light scatter of salt as you go.
Continue layering until all the potatoes are used, pressing down firmly every few layers to compact the stack and remove air pockets.
Cover the pan with foil, then set a second, slightly smaller heavy pan directly on top to weight it, and cook over medium-low heat on the stovetop for 15 minutes to set the base.
Transfer, still weighted, to a 400°F oven and bake for 45–50 minutes, until a skewer meets no resistance in the center.
Remove the weight, run a thin knife around the edge, and invert onto a board or platter in one confident motion — the underside, which was against the pan, should be a single, solid, deep brown disc.

Make-ahead

This is best cooked close to the meal, since the crisp base is at its most dramatic straight out of the pan. If you must get ahead, cook it fully up to a few hours in advance and reheat, still in its pan, in a hot oven for 15 minutes to re-crisp the base — it will be good, not quite as good as fresh out of the pan.

Holding and service

Holds at room temperature or lightly warm for about 30 minutes before the base starts to soften from trapped steam underneath. Serve it within that window, ideally sliced at the table so the layers are visible while they’re still holding their shape.

Scaling

A 10 inch pan reasonably holds about 3¼ lb of sliced potatoes for 8 servings — the labor, not the pan, is what fails to scale. Slicing 6½ lb of potatoes to a consistent 1/16 inch by hand takes roughly twice as long as 3¼ lb, not because the mandoline gets slower but because fatigue and inconsistency creep in past about the first two pounds; for a larger table, split the slicing between two people working two pans rather than one person doing it all.

Substitutions

No clarified butter on hand — ordinary melted butter works, though the milk solids can catch and darken more than clarified butter would at the same oven temperature, so watch the top layer in the last ten minutes.
No mandoline — a very sharp knife and real patience get you there, though it’s genuinely difficult to hit a consistent 1/16 inch by hand across an entire potato; expect the dish to be a little less uniform and to hold together slightly less cleanly when it’s turned out.

Why this dish, at Nothing in This Room Is Finished

It belongs to Nothing in This Room Is Finished, where expensive labor on a cheap ingredient is the entire premise. This dish is that principle stated as plainly as a kitchen can state it: a potato, cut to a sixteenth of an inch, and forty minutes of somebody’s hands.

Part of Recipes & Technique.