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Onion and Eggs
Wash and peel a large Spanish onion. Cut it into slices about a quarter of an inch in thickness, strew a little salt and pepper over these, and fry them in hot butter until they are tender, without being browned. Take the pieces up with an egg-slicer to preserve them whole, drain well from the fat, and place them on a hot dish. Squeeze the juice of two large fresh lemons upon them. Have ready four poached eggs, place these on the onions, and serve immediately. Time, twenty minutes altogether. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A simple supper dish that lives or dies on the frying: the onion must go soft and sweet without taking any colour, which is slower than twenty minutes suggests.
- The hinge — no browningCook the slices in butter over low heat, covered for part of the time, so they steam as much as fry. Any colour on the rings turns the flavour from mild and sweet to caramelised, which fights the lemon.
- TimingTwenty minutes "altogether" is optimistic for quarter-inch slices of a large onion. Allow 25-30 minutes over low heat, poaching the eggs in the last five.
- An egg-slicerNot the wire gadget for hard-boiled eggs. From the instruction to lift the pieces up whole, the tool meant here is evidently a broad slotted turner or fish slice of the kind also used for lifting a poached egg intact. Any wide slotted spatula works.
- Spanish onionStill sold under that name, and still the right choice: large, pale, mild and high in sugar. A standard yellow onion is sharper and will need longer to lose its bite.
- The lemonTwo large lemons over one onion is a lot of acid by modern palates. Start with one, taste, and add more; the juice should brighten the butter, not swamp it.
- Seasoning orderSalt drawn out early helps the slices collapse, which is what the direction to strew salt and pepper before frying will do here. Save the pepper for the finish if you want it to register against the lemon.
- Yield and servingTwo to three as written, with the four eggs suggesting two generous portions. Toast or fried bread under the onions catches the buttery, lemony juices, which otherwise pool on the dish.
Cassell's places this among the plainest of egg dishes: onion, butter, lemon, poached egg, all of them things a late-Victorian kitchen had to hand at any hour. The costing of 8d puts it firmly in the everyday range for the book's readership, a meatless supper or a breakfast dish rather than anything for company. The Spanish onion had become a fixture in British greengrocers through the nineteenth century, imported in quantity from Spain and prized precisely because it was mild enough to eat in bulk, in slices as the substance of a dish rather than as a seasoning for something else.