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ONION SAUCE, BROWN (another way)
Peel two large onions, and cut away the ends. Divide them into thin slices, and lay them in salted water for an hour. Drain them, and fry them in a little butter until they are lightly browned. Pour over them half a pint of good brown sauce, and let them simmer until tender. Add a little more sauce if required. Press them through a sieve. Return the puree to the saucepan, add an ounce of butter and a table-spoonful of glaze, simmer five or six minutes, and serve very hot. A tea-spoonful of dry mustard is sometimes mixed with the above sauce. Time, altogether, two hours. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A straightforward onion puree enriched with brown sauce, of the sort meant to go beside roast mutton or boiled tripe. Nothing here is difficult; the work is in the two supporting preparations the book assumes you already have.
- Brown sauceThis means espagnole or a well-made brown gravy thickened with browned roux and built on beef or veal stock, not bottled brown sauce of the HP type. Demi-glace, or a good reduced beef stock lightly thickened, stands in.
- GlazeMeat glaze is stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. A tablespoon of commercial demi-glace concentrate or a spoonful of your own reduced stock does the same job: it is there for gloss and depth, not thickening.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, so about 1 1/4 US cups. Expect to add a splash more as the onions drink it up during simmering.
- The salted soakAn hour in salted water draws out some of the harshness of raw onion and seasons the slices through. It is worth doing, but drain them well or the sauce turns salty once the glaze goes in.
- Browning the onions"Lightly browned" is the hinge. Take them to a light golden colour over moderate heat -- perhaps a quarter of an hour, though the book gives no separate time -- and stop short of dark edges, which turn bitter and cannot be sieved out.
- SievingA food mill or blender does this in seconds; a blender gives a smoother, paler result than a sieve, so pulse rather than puree if you want some texture.
- The mustardA teaspoon of dry English mustard is a real change of direction, pushing the sauce toward mutton and boiled meats. The book does not say when to add it; stirring it in at the end, off the boil, keeps more of its bite.
- Time and yieldThe stated two hours must include the hour of soaking; active work is a good deal less, assuming the brown sauce already exists. The book says it is sufficient for four or five persons.
Brown onion sauce belongs to the family of English sauces built on the French espagnole that Victorian professional kitchens adopted wholesale, and the entry assumes a brown sauce already made and to hand. The white version, onions boiled and bound with milk or bechamel, was the standby for roast mutton and rabbit; this browned form, sharpened with meat glaze and sometimes mustard, was aimed at heavier meats and offal. The "probable cost, 8d." is characteristic of a dictionary costing dishes for middle-class households running on a fixed weekly figure, and it assumes access to stock and trimmings from the rest of the week's cooking.