Talk:Hachis Parmentier

This article is seriously misleading
This article is riddled with misconceptions. In the English language,"hachis parmentier" refers specifically to a recipe of haute cusine listed by Escoffier. Otherwise, it is nothing either more or less than a French translation of cottage pie or shepherd's pie. I propose that this article be rewritten accordingly. Letsgetthingsright (talk) 21:40, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. The article as it stands is not suitable/necessary for en.wikipedia. TINY  MARK  00:00, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't see any evidence that hachis parmentier in English refers specifically to Escoffier's stuffed-potato variation. In fact, I don't see any evidence that Escoffier's version was widely made in either the francophone or the anglophone world. I do agree that it is just the French name for cottage/shepherd's pie. --Macrakis (talk) 18:42, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I've been eating Hachis Parmentier for over 50 years now, at least 25 of which were spent in France and Tahiti in and around the company of French people and French delis and grocery stores and I have NEVER seen a reference to the Escoffier version, nor ever seen anything even remotely similar to it. To me, and every French/Tahitian chef/cook/traiteur/friend I ever knew, it is simply the French version of the cottage pie or shepherds pie. If you ran across something like the Escoffier version in France or Tahiti, it would almost certainly have been called something like pomme de terre en robe des champs farci a l'Escoffier Hayford Peirce (talk) 21:22, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I've just looked at my old (1961) edition of Larousse Gastronomique, in which the text is in English but the index, bafflingly, is in French, and this is what I found: in the Index, there no NO "Hachis Parmentier"! There is, instead, "Hachis de boeuf a la Parmentier, 489". Then, on page 489, there is a recipe for Beef hash a la Parmentier, Hachis de Boeuf a la Parmentier. So Larousse is calling it a HASH, not a Parmentier. A big difference, I think, and one that should justify REMOVING the reference to Escoffier in the article itself. If you disagree with me about this, then let's discuss it here. Hayford Peirce (talk) 21:50, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Ah, yes, I have that edition, too!
 * Not sure what your point is, though. That the 1961 Larousse Gastronomique uses the full French name where normally a shortened name is used? Not a surprise -- they also list "pommes de terres frites", where the far more common name is simply "pommes frites" or just "frites". That the Larousse Gastronomique 's English translation is stilted and idiosyncratic? Also not a surprise. That they mention Escoffier's version rather than the everyday version of the dish? Again, not a surprise. --Macrakis (talk) 22:48, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I guess my point is that I see little reason to keep the (mis?)information in the article about Hachis Parmentier being a stuffed potato. Since clearly in MOST cases Hachis Parmentier means something entirely different. If the article were called Beef Hash or Stuffed Potato with Beef Hash, that would be another matter. As I said above, more or less,I wager that if you asked 1,000 cultivated French people what "Hachis Parmentier" was, 999 of them would say it's a baked dish with mashed potatoes on top of ground meat. One that they got heartly tired of eating in private schools or, I suppose, public ones also. Isn't there a wonderful scene in "Diabolique" in which the headmaster forces his underlings to eat a revolting Hachis Parmentier?Hayford Peirce (talk) 00:49, 19 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Ah! I agree with you that the stuffed-potato version is Escoffier's idiosyncratic attempt to make a fancy dish out of an ordinary dish, and that I've never seen it in the wild. That said, Escoffier is Escoffier, and he called his recipe "Hachis Parmentier". The dynamics of wikipedia are such that if you remove information from an article (even misleading information), it tends to get added back by some well-meaning person who thinks s/he's discovered "missing" information. So I find it's better to contextualize such information, so the article currently reads "Escoffier's more elaborate version of 1921". Until we find a reliable source saying that no one actually makes it this way, I think that's about as far as we can go. --Macrakis (talk) 15:37, 19 November 2019 (UTC)


 * You are, of course, 100%. I myself have (by mistake) added erroneous material to WP and CZ over the years and then lived to see it become accepted "fact" all over the internet. So I agree with you: we should leave the article as it is, with the info about Escoffier retained. (I have a couple of Escoffier books in the original French downstairs -- I'll go check them to see if he mentions Hachis P. in them, but I doubt it. Salut! Hayford Peirce (talk) 16:13, 19 November 2019 (UTC)


 * (1921). Curiously, the 1903 French Guide culinaire doesn't have it, but the English translation of 1907 does.
 * Interesting question: when did "Parmentier" start being used to describe potato dishes? OED has 1875. TLF doesn't have it at all, though it has parmentière as a name for the potato (1862). I find other examples in the 1870s, but not earlier.
 * --Macrakis (talk) 17:16, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

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Can't someone find a better picture than the one used here?
That's a very strange one. If worse comes to worst, I'll have to make a hachis myself and take some pictures. Hayford Peirce (talk) 17:36, 21 November 2019 (UTC)