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ONION OMELET. (See OMELET, ONION.)
ONION PORRIDGE (a country remedy for a cold in the head). Peel a large Spanish onion, divide it into four, and put it into a saucepan with half a salt-spoonful of salt, two ounces of butter, and a pint of cold water. Let it simmer gently until it is quite tender, then pour it into a heated bowl, dredge a little pepper over it, and eat it as hot as possible just before going to bed. Time to boil the onion, about half an hour. Probable cost, 4d. Sufficient for one person.
A one-bowl invalid dish: a quartered onion simmered in salted, buttered water and eaten broth and all. The measurements are Victorian British, and the timing is optimistic.
- Imperial pintThe pint here is the British 20 fl oz, not the American 16. Use 2.5 cups of water if you want the same ratio of broth to onion.
- Salt-spoonfulA salt-spoon was the tiny spoon kept in an open salt cellar, usually reckoned at about a quarter teaspoon. Half of one is a scant pinch.
- Spanish onionStill sold under that name, and still the right choice: large, pale, mild and sweet enough to be eaten in quantity. A standard yellow onion will be sharper and needs the full simmer to mellow.
- The timingHalf an hour will not reliably render a large quartered Spanish onion tender to the centre. Expect 45 minutes to an hour at a bare simmer, testing with a knife tip through the thickest quarter.
- Keep the lid onWith only a pint of water and a long simmer, an uncovered pan will reduce to almost nothing. Cover it, and top up with hot water if the onion is not submerged.
- Butter quantityTwo ounces is half a stick, or four tablespoons, for a single serving. It will sit as a slick on the surface rather than emulsifying; that richness is the point of the dish, but a third of the amount makes a more palatable broth.
- YieldOne bowl, as stated. It is soup rather than porridge in any modern sense, and it is worth a good grinding of black pepper and a slice of bread alongside.
"Porridge" in older British usage did not necessarily mean oatmeal; it descends from pottage, any thickish thing simmered in a pot, and survived in that broader sense in country speech long after breakfast oats had claimed the word. Onion broth as a remedy for colds and chills is old folk practice across northern Europe, generally traced to the onion's reputation as a warming, expectorant vegetable rather than to any documented origin, and it turns up throughout nineteenth-century domestic manuals in the chapters on cookery for invalids. The instruction to eat it as hot as possible just before bed is the operative part of the treatment.