Vitelotte

'Vitelotte' potatoes have a dark blue, almost black, skin and dark violet-blue flesh; they have a characteristic nutty flavour and smell of chestnuts. The colour is retained in cooking, and is due to natural pigments in the anthocyanin group of flavonoids.^[4] The plants mature late and, compared to modern varieties, are relatively low-yielding. The tubers are elongated with sunken eyes;^[2] they are thick-skinned, and thus keep well.

The French word vitelotte derives from the archaic French: vit, meaning "penis" (modern French bite), by analogy with the shape of the tuber. The first occurrence of the word is from 1812.^[5]

In early descriptions, vitelotte were not necessarily violet-coloured. In a source from 1817, six varieties of potato are listed as available at the market of Les Halles; among them are both vitelotte and violette ("violet").^[6]: 508 A treatise on agriculture published in 1863 lists five possible colours for the vitelotte: white, yellow, pink, red and violet.^[7] In 1873 Alexandre Dumas wrote in his Grand dictionnaire de cuisine:^[8]: 847

"... the best of all are unquestionably the violet [ones], preferable even to the red [ones], [and] known in Paris by the name of Vitelottes'".

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  Whole and halved
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  As potato crisps
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  Leaves and stalks showing violet colouring