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Stewed Onions
-Mrs E. A. B.
Select small ones of the same size. Skin and throw into cold water. After an hour put on to boil; when half done drain, again cover with water.
When tender turn off the water and add a cup of milk, a piece of butter, and season with pepper and salt.
A plain two-water boil that draws out the harshest of the onion's sulphur, finished with milk and butter in the pan. The method is sound; only the vagueness of the quantities needs translating.
- The hinge: change the waterDraining halfway through and re-covering with fresh water is the whole point of the recipe — it carries off the sulphurous compounds that make boiled onions taste sharp. Skipping it gives a noticeably stronger, more aggressive dish.
- The cold-water soakThe recipe skins the onions first and then gives them an hour in cold water; the purpose is not stated, though a soak is commonly said to mellow the flavour. A shorter soak of 20-30 minutes will do if you are pressed.
- Onions to use"Small ones of the same size" points to small boiling onions, chosen matched so they cook through evenly; the recipe specifies no quantity, but roughly 1.5 lb suits the cup of milk called for. Trim the root end shallowly so the layers hold together.
- PeelingDropping trimmed onions in boiling water for 30 seconds and then into cold water makes the skins slip off, which is far faster than paring small onions by hand.
- TimingSmall whole onions need roughly 20-30 minutes total simmering to become tender at the centre. Test with a skewer rather than by the clock; overcooked, they collapse into strings.
- Butter and milkRead "a piece of butter" as 1-2 tablespoons for this quantity, with a cup of whole milk. Warm them through with the onions over low heat for a few minutes — the milk should not be brought to a hard boil, or it will catch and separate.
- If you want it thickerThis recipe leaves the milk thin. A tablespoon of flour rubbed into the butter before adding the milk turns it into creamed onions.
- SeasoningSeason at the end, as the recipe directs. White pepper suits the pale sauce better than black if appearance matters.
Boiled or stewed small onions in milk were a fixture of nineteenth-century American vegetable cookery and the direct ancestor of the creamed onions still served at Thanksgiving. The two-water method — parboil, drain, cover again — was standard advice for any vegetable thought too strong to eat plainly, and appears in period books for cabbage, turnips and old greens as well. Like much of this book, the recipe is credited to a contributor rather than a professional cook: community cookbooks of the era were assembled from members' handwritten cards, which may explain the conversational shorthand and the apparent assumption that the reader already knows what "a piece of butter" means.