Gratin dauphinois

Potatoes, cream, garlic. No cheese in the original — the crust comes from the cream and the starch, and cheese is what people add when the potatoes are wrong.

1200 g — waxy potatoes

500 ml — double cream

300 ml — whole milk

10 g — garlic

30 g — butter

1 pinch — nutmeg, grated

8 g — salt

1 pinch — white pepper

Slice the potatoes 3 mm thick and do not rinse them. The starch on the slices is the thickener; wash it off and you get potatoes swimming in milk.

Rub the dish with a cut garlic clove and butter it. Bring the cream, milk, the rest of the garlic, salt and nutmeg to a simmer, add the potatoes and cook them in the pan for ten minutes.

Tip it all into the dish, level the top and bake at 160 °C for an hour. Test with a knife tip, not with your eyes — the crust browns long before the middle is done.

Rest it twenty minutes before serving. Cut straight out of the oven, it slumps; twenty minutes and it holds a clean square.