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Gravy, Onion
Take three Spanish onions, cut them into slices, and fry them with two ounces of butter, till they are slightly browned. Drain them, and mix a table-spoonful of flour, very smoothly, with the butter. Add, gradually, three-quarters of a pint of stock, return the onions to the saucepan, and simmer gently until they are quite soft. Season with pepper and salt, pass them through a fine sieve, and boil up once more, adding two table-spoonfuls of ketchup, two of claret, and a tea-spoonful of lemon-juice. Time, altogether, about three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, exclusive of the wine, 6d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A straightforward brown onion sauce, thickened with a roux and finished with sharp, savoury liquids. Two of its ingredients mean something different now than they did in the 1870s.
- Ketchup means mushroom or walnut ketchupIn a Victorian English kitchen "ketchup" is an unsweetened, salty, near-black mushroom or walnut extract, closer to a thin Worcestershire sauce. Two tablespoons of modern tomato ketchup will make the gravy sweet and pink; use mushroom ketchup, or substitute Worcestershire sauce or a dark soy in smaller quantity and taste as you go.
- MeasuresThree-quarters of a pint is an imperial measure, about 15 fl oz or a scant 2 cups. Two ounces of butter is half a stick.
- Spanish onionsThese are the large, mild onions still sold under that name; three of them is a substantial quantity, perhaps 2 lb or more. Ordinary yellow onions work but are sharper, so expect a more aggressive gravy.
- The hinge is the rouxDrain the onions and cook the flour in the remaining butter for a minute or two before any stock goes in, and add the stock gradually while stirring. Flour dumped into hot liquid or left raw in the butter gives a pasty, floury sauce that no amount of simmering fixes.
- SievingPassing the whole thing through a fine sieve was the usual route to a smooth sauce before blenders. A stick blender does the work in seconds; pass it through a sieve afterwards if you want the glossy, uniform texture the original intends.
- The finish should not be boiled hardBring it just back to a boil after the ketchup, claret and lemon juice go in, then stop. A long second boil cooks off the wine's fruit and dulls the lemon, which is there for lift.
- Yield and useEnough for five or six as an accompanying gravy. It is meant for roast or grilled meat, liver, sausages or chops rather than as a soup.
Onion gravy of this kind sits at the point where the French sauce repertoire met English roast-meat cookery: a brown roux and stock in the classical manner, then a distinctly British finish of bottled ketchup, red wine and lemon. Cassell's, first issued in parts in the 1870s, was written for households running on one cook and a tight budget, which is why the entry ends with a costing the whole sauce at sixpence exclusive of the claret. The reliance on bottled mushroom or walnut ketchup is also of its moment: such extracts were a standard store-cupboard item for adding depth to gravies, and were widely made at home as well as bought, long before tomato ketchup pushed the older sorts out of common use.