Parmentier

"It's a planet that shouldn't exist," study co-author Vivien Parmentier, a researcher at the Observatory of Côte d'Azur in Nice, France, said in the same statement.

AS A 26-YEAR-OLD chef working in Paris in 2002, Shaun McCrain would make hachis Parmentier for staff meals at then-Michelin two-star restaurant Les Élysées du Vernet, under chef Alain Solivérès.

Its namesake, Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, was an 18th-century French pharmacist, agronomist and ardent potato promoter who convinced his compatriots that the widely scorned tubers were not only good for fattening pigs but also fit, even desirable, for human consumption.

This winter, McCrain resurrected hachis Parmentier at Copine, not for the $120, three-course menu offered on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, but for one of his Sunday supper takeaway menus.

A cousin to cottage pie or shepherd’s pie, hachis Parmentier is the kind of dish that thrifty French cooks might make at home with leftover boiled or roasted beef.