Home › The Principles of Cookery › Garnish, Glazed Onion For
Garnish, Glazed Onion For
Take twelve onions of equal size, about two inches in diameter. Peel off the brown skin and the first skin under it. With a small pointed knife scoop out a cavity an inch deep in the middle of each. Melt two ounces of butter in a stewpan, and arrange the onions in it side by side, leaving a little room between each; fill the cavities with sifted sugar. Fry the onions, turning them over to brown both sides. When nicely browned, pour over them enough good stock to cover them. Cover the pan, and simmer over a slow fire, basting the onions frequently with the stock until it is reduced to a glaze, and the onions are quite soft but not broken. Strain the glaze and pour it over a roast or braised shoulder of mutton, and arrange the onions round. Probable cost, 10d.
A glazed onion garnish for a roast joint, cooked entirely on the stovetop. The technique is sound; the only real difficulty is keeping twelve onions intact while reducing the liquid around them.
- The hinge: gentle heat, no stirringOnce the stock goes in, the onions should not be moved except to baste. A bare simmer over low heat, with the pan covered as the recipe directs, will bring them to softness with their layers still married together; the recipe gives no time, so judge by feel rather than the clock. Any brisk boiling and they slump into rings.
- Onion size and typeTwo inches across is a small-to-medium onion, on the order of 2-3 oz each. Pick them as uniform as possible so they finish together; trim the root flat but leave it attached, as the root plate is what holds the onion whole.
- Scooping the cavityAn inch-deep cone taken out with a paring knife or a melon baller. Do not go through to the base, or the sugar leaks out and burns on the pan bottom.
- "Sifted sugar"Sugar passed through a sieve. In Victorian usage this frequently meant sugar broken from the loaf and sifted fine, so it may be nearer caster than modern granulated; either will serve. A spoonful or so per cavity.
- Good stockA well-made brown veal or beef stock, unsalted or lightly salted, since it reduces to a fraction of its volume. Commercial stock cubes and most cartoned broths will finish unpleasantly salty; if that is all you have, dilute. You need enough to cover the onions, which in a wide pan means a good deal more than a quart.
- PanA "stewpan" here is a wide, shallow, straight-sided pan with a lid — a modern sauté pan or shallow braiser. The onions must sit in one layer with space between them, so a 12-inch pan is the minimum for a full dozen.
- Knowing when the glaze is rightReduce until the liquid coats the back of a spoon and moves sluggishly; it will thicken further off the heat. Two ounces of butter (4 tablespoons) plus a gelatinous stock gives enough body without any added flour.
- YieldTwelve onions garnish a whole shoulder of mutton or lamb, which will serve perhaps six to eight. Halve the quantity for a family roast.
- Cost note"Probable cost, 10d." is ten pence in pre-decimal British money, a figure Cassell's gave for its own late-Victorian market and of no use as a guide today.
Cassell's enters this under the garnishes rather than among the vegetable dishes -- the book is arranged alphabetically as a dictionary -- and that is the point of it: in the Victorian and Edwardian service of a large joint, the platter was expected to arrive dressed, with the sauce made from the same pan as the trimming. Glazing -- reducing stock and butter around a vegetable until it takes on a shining coat -- is a French kitchen technique that English cookery books took up through the nineteenth century, and the same method was applied to carrots, turnips or chestnuts alike. The hollowed cavity filled with sugar is a more theatrical version of the idea: the sugar caramelises against the butter, then dissolves into the stock, so each onion effectively seasons its own glaze. Shoulder of mutton, the joint it is meant to accompany, was a comparatively cheap, fatty and strongly flavoured cut, and a sweet garnish suited it.