Gratins

Appears in

Savoie: The Land, People, and Food of the French Alps

Published 1989

About

The word gratin was explained on Channel 2 of French National Television in 1981 by a professor at the University of Grenoble as deriving from the Latin name for Grenoble: Gratianapolis. It is probable that it was applied to dishes of vegetables or of meats and vegetables, which were baked in the various metal dishes illustrated in the Apicius cookbook. The brown earthenware dishes in which gratins are baked now resemble those dishes, sometimes in shape and always in depth.

If gratins really originated in the Dauphiné, they then inched their way north, for they are also found in the mountains of the Savoie and the Jura. Both in the Savoie and the Jura the faience and ceramic dishes in which gratins have been made since the eighteenth century can be identified as to their origin by their shape and workmanship. They are mostly oval, although a few are round or rectangular, very shallow, with rims no higher than 1½ to 2 inches; some have straight sides and a flat bottom, while others show a scalloped design inside.