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ONIONS (a la Creme)
Peel four medium-sized Spanish onions, and boil them in water slightly salted until they are sufficiently cooked. Drain them on a sieve, and put them into a stewpan with three ounces of butter rubbed smoothly with a table-spoonful of flour, and a little salt and white pepper. Shake the pan constantly, and stir in by degrees half a pint of cream or new milk. Serve the onions on toasted bread, with the sauce poured over. Sufficient for four or five persons. Time, one hour to boil the onions, quarter of an hour to stew them. Cost, with cream, 1s. 7d.; with milk, 11d.
A simple creamed onion dish that depends almost entirely on how you handle the butter and flour. Read the sauce note first.
- The hinge: 3 oz butter to 1 tablespoon flourThat is far more fat than the flour can carry, so the sauce will break unless you keep the pan moving and add the liquid in small amounts, off direct heat, letting each addition emulsify before the next. If you want a stable sauce, use about 1 oz of butter to the tablespoon of flour and whisk the rest of the butter in at the end.
- Half a pint of creamAn imperial half-pint is 10 imperial fl oz, a scant 1¼ US cups. Single cream or half-and-half is closest to what was meant; heavy cream will give a much thicker result and needs less.
- "New milk"Fresh whole milk, not skimmed and not soured. Ordinary whole milk is the substitute, and the recipe's own costing shows the cream version cost considerably more than the milk one.
- Spanish onionsLarge mild yellow onions; the recipe asks only for 'medium-sized' ones. Modern sweet varieties can stand in, though they are sweeter and more watery. Trim the root flat but leave the onion whole so it holds its shape through the long boil.
- An hour to boilReasonable for whole onions of that size, but test rather than trust the clock: a thin skewer should pass through the centre with no resistance. Undercooked onion centres stay sharp and fibrous, and the fifteen-minute stew will not fix them.
- StewpanA heavy-bottomed saucepan wide enough to hold the four onions in one layer. "Shake the pan constantly" is doing the work of a whisk in a pan too crowded to whisk in.
- ServingToast cut thick enough not to collapse; the onions release liquid as they sit. The recipe gives it as sufficient for four or five persons.
- The cost line1s. 7d. and 11d. are pre-decimal shillings and pence, of no use as a modern price but a useful signal that the cream version cost appreciably more than the milk one.
Creamed onions on toast belong to a broad Victorian and Edwardian family of vegetable dishes finished with a butter-and-flour sauce, the same technique that produced creamed spinach, creamed celery and the endless white sauces of the period. Spanish onions had become widely available in British markets through the nineteenth century and were prized for their size and mildness, which let them be cooked whole and served as the centre of a dish rather than chopped as a background flavouring. Setting a soft vegetable on toast, rather than beside potatoes or rice, was common in British cookery for lighter suppers and breakfast dishes, and the toast had the practical effect of absorbing the sauce.