France and the Alps · Volume 16, Altitude, Cheese and a Border the Kitchen Never Drew
Papet vaudois
Vaud
Illustration
- Time
- 1 hour 10
- Researched
- 22 sources cited
Vaud. First documented references are only mid-19th century; no evidence of genuine medieval antiquity, and pork was in fact more expensive than veal in the final years of the Old Regime, which argues against an "ancient peasant sausage" framing this dish is often given.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. 35 minutes' preparation, 35 minutes' cooking.
Ingredients
The sausages
- 2 saucisses aux choux
- optional 1 saucisson vaudois
The papet
- a little butter
- 2 onions, finely chopped
- 1 kg leeks, in 3cm pieces
- 2.5 dl white wine
- 2.5 dl broth
- 500 g potatoes, in large dice
- 1 dl cream
- 1 tbsp white vinegar
- to taste salt, pepper and nutmeg
Method
- Prick the sausages with a toothpick or two and cook them 30 to 40 minutes in barely simmering water. Keep them aside.
- Sweat the onions in butter, add the leeks and colour them lightly.
- Pour in the wine and broth and simmer about 15 minutes.
- Add the potatoes and simmer about 20 minutes more.
- Stir in the cream and vinegar and check the seasoning.
- Serve on warmed plates with the sausages sliced on top.
Notes
The recipe is Swissmilk's, the Swiss milk producers' body. Viande Suisse poaches the sausages covered at the boil 30 minutes, cooks the potatoes before the leeks, thickens with half cream and cornflour, and serves it with parsley and mustard. Neither gives a sausage temperature.
What a modern chef changes
Precise low-temperature control for the sausage, and the leek and potato kept genuinely distinct rather than merely unmashed
Rung 4
Method
- Poach the saucisse aux choux sous vide at 75°C, matching the traditional temperature exactly, for 45 minutes, then finish with a brief, hard sear in a dry pan. This gives the sausage the same gentle internal cook the traditional simmer aims for, with none of the risk of a home stovetop drifting hotter over the same duration.
- Cook the leeks and potatoes in two entirely separate pans rather than one shared pot, the potatoes in a lightly salted stock, the leeks in butter with only a splash of the same stock, then combine only at the point of plating. This takes the tradition's own instruction, that the two must retain their shape, further than a shared pot easily allows, since even careful simultaneous cooking in one liquid tends to let the leek's own moisture soften the potato's edges.
- Finish the combined vegetables with a light cream and white wine reduction spooned over rather than cooked in, keeping the reduction's own acidity and richness as a separate, considered sauce element rather than a background cooking liquid the vegetables have simply absorbed.