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Onion Soup, Brown
Take about two dozen small silver onions--such as would be used for pickling--peel them carefully, sprinkle a little sugar on them, and fry them till nicely browned in a little hot butter. Pour over them two pints of clear brown gravy soup nicely seasoned and strongly flavoured with onions. Let all boil up together, and serve very hot. If preferred, this soup may be thickened by stirring into it a table-spoonful of ground rice or flour mixed smoothly with a small quantity of cold water. Time, about ten minutes to brown the onions. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A quick soup that depends entirely on the quality of the stock and the patience of the browning. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the quantities are Victorian shorthand.
- Silver onionsThese are small white pickling onions, about an inch across; frozen or fresh pearl onions are the modern equivalent. Two dozen comes to roughly 12 oz to 1 lb once peeled. Trim the root flat but leave it intact so the layers hold together in the pan.
- Brown gravy soupIn Cassell's this appears to mean a clear brown stock built on browned beef and bones, closer to a light consomme than to gravy. A good unsalted beef stock, well reduced, is the practical stand-in; the instruction to have it "strongly flavoured with onions" suggests the base itself should carry onion, so a browned halved onion can be simmered in it.
- Two pintsImperial pints, so 40 fl oz, or about 5 US cups. With the onions this gives four to five modest bowls, as stated.
- The browning is the dishThe sugar is there to help the onions take colour, not to sweeten. Use moderate heat and give them 15 to 20 minutes rather than the ten specified, turning so they colour evenly; rushed high heat scorches the sugar and the soup turns bitter.
- Boiling upOnce the stock goes in, bring it just to a boil and serve. Prolonged simmering collapses small onions into shreds, which defeats the point of peeling two dozen of them.
- Ground rice as thickenerGround rice is rice milled fine, coarser than rice flour but usable interchangeably here. Slaked with cold water and stirred into boiling soup it needs two or three minutes to lose its raw taste; flour needs a little longer.
- SeasoningPeriod practice on when salt went into stock varied. If yours is unsalted, season at the end, after any reduction, and finish with pepper.
- Probable cost1s. 6d. is one shilling and sixpence, a household-budget note of the kind Cassell's attached to nearly every entry rather than a figure with any modern meaning.
Brown onion soups sit in a long European line running back at least to the seventeenth century, when onions and stale bread were the cheapest way to turn broth into a meal; the Parisian gratinated version most people now think of as onion soup is a nineteenth-century refinement of that same idea. What distinguishes this Cassell's entry is that it is not a peasant dish at all but a garnished clear soup: the onions are chosen small and uniform, glazed whole, and floated in a clarified brown stock, which places it among the many potages a Victorian kitchen was expected to produce from a single well-made base. The appearance of pickling onions is a reminder of how much of the year's produce passed through a British household's vinegar jars; using them fresh in a soup was simply a variation on stock the cook already had.