Baked and breads
Tartiflette
A Savoy bake of potatoes, onions and bacon under a whole Reblochon, cut in half and melted on top.
Tartiflette is a gratin from the Haute-Savoie mountains. Sliced potatoes are cooked with onions, lardons and a splash of white wine, then a whole Reblochon is split and laid rind side up across the top. In the oven the cheese runs down through the layers. It is the standard dish of ski resorts across the French Alps.
What goes in
- Reblochon524%, Halved and laid rind up.
- Waxy potatoes838%, Par-boiled and sliced.
- Lardons314%, Smoked bacon, browned.
- Onions314%, Softened in the bacon fat.
- Dry white Savoy wine15%, Deglazes the pan.
- Crème fraîche15%, Optional, for extra richness.
Rough parts by weight. The ring shows each ingredient's share of the dish.
Made step by step
Each drawing shows the operation for that step. Quantities and timings differ from house to house; this is one traditional way, in outline.
Step 1: Simmer Boil the potatoes in their skins until just tender, then peel and slice. Step 2: Fry Brown the lardons, add sliced onions and cook until soft and golden. Step 3: Simmer Deglaze with white wine and fold in the potatoes. Step 4: Layer Spread the mixture in a buttered dish rubbed with garlic. Step 5: Layer Cut the Reblochon in half horizontally and lay both halves rind side up on top. Step 6: Bake Bake until the cheese has melted into the potatoes and the rind is golden. Step 7: Serve Serve with a green salad and cured ham. Finished Tartiflette, by share.
Old roots, new name
Savoyard farmhouses long made a potato and onion dish called péla, cooked in a long-handled pan with cheese. Tartiflette in its present form was promoted in the 1980s by the trade body for Reblochon, which wanted a dish to lift sales of the cheese. The name borrows from tartiflâ, an Arpitan word for potato. It caught on quickly and now feels entirely traditional.
The Reblochon
Reblochon is a soft, washed-rind cow's milk cheese from the Aravis and Thônes valleys, with a supple texture and a nutty, faintly earthy smell. A whole cheese, or half of one, sits on top of each dish. The rind is left on and browns in the oven. Other soft mountain cheeses are used in a pinch, but the name properly implies Reblochon.
Where it is used
The cheeses in it
More on EveryCheese
No cheeses here yet. New pages are added every day.
Sources and further reading
Original text and drawings by the EveryCheese desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. The shares are a rough, illustrative ratio, not a recipe: every family and kitchen makes it differently. If we have something wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Reblochon: Pierre-Yves Beaudouin, CC BY-SA 4.0, source