Home › December › Bermuda Salad
Bermuda Salad
Slice thinly three or four Bermuda onions. Sprinkle with one tablespoon sugar, one teaspoon salt and cover with ice water. Let stand three hours. Drain and serve with French Dressing.
A three-ingredient salad that lives or dies on how thin the onions are cut and how well they are dried before dressing.
- Bermuda onionsA large, flat, mild onion, pale yellow or white, sold seasonally in the period. Any good sweet onion stands in: Vidalia, Walla Walla, Texas Sweet or a Spanish onion. A sharp storage onion will not soften enough in the soak.
- Slice thinly means very thinlyAim for translucent rounds, about 1/16 inch. A mandoline or the slicing disc of a food processor does it evenly; thick slices stay harsh no matter how long they sit.
- What the soak is doingSugar, salt and ice water leach out and dilute the water-soluble compounds that make raw onion bite. The recipe's three hours is generous; a shorter soak in genuinely iced water will get much of the effect and keep the slices crisper. Keep it in the refrigerator if it goes the full three hours.
- Drain thoroughlyThis is the hinge. Drain in a colander, then spread the slices on a towel and blot. Wet onion dilutes the dressing and leaves a puddle in the bowl.
- French dressing, 1913 senseFrench dressing -- Not the sweet orange bottled dressing. In period usage it means a plain vinaigrette: oil and vinegar, commonly around three to one, whisked with salt and pepper. Make it just before serving.
- Yield and servingThree or four large onions will probably serve six to eight as a side salad. Serve cold, on lettuce leaves if you want a plate that holds together.
Bermuda's onion trade with the American East Coast was substantial through the nineteenth century, shipping mild, flat-globe onions grown from Canary Islands stock into New York and Boston well ahead of the domestic crop; Bermudians were nicknamed "Onions" for it. By the time this book appeared, much of what Americans bought as a "Bermuda onion" was in fact grown in Texas from the same seed lines, and the name had shifted from an origin to a type. The salad itself belongs to a genre of tidy, single-vegetable American salads, and the sugar-and-ice-water soak appears to be a period trick for making raw onion polite enough to eat on its own.