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Onions, Brown, for Garnishing Stews
Cut the two ends from some small silver onions, and throw them into boiling water for five minutes. Drain them on an inverted sieve, and when cool take off the outer skins, and put them into a well-buttered saute-pan, with a little butter and sugar, and fry them (turning them over once) until they are lightly browned all over. Drain them well, and, ten minutes before they are used, put them into the stew which they are intended to garnish. Time, about ten minutes to brown the onions. Probable cost, 3d. per pound. Sufficient, one pound for a dish large enough for five or six persons.
A glazing technique rather than a dish in its own right: small onions blanched, peeled, then caramelised in butter and sugar before being dropped into a stew at the last moment. A few notes on the terms and the timing.
- Silver onionsThese are small white pickling onions, roughly an inch across. Frozen peeled pearl onions are the practical substitute and skip the blanching step entirely; shallots can be used instead, though they are sweeter.
- Why blanch firstThe five minutes in boiling water loosens the papery skin so it slips off without cutting into the flesh. Trimming both ends before blanching, as directed, is what lets the skin come away cleanly — but do not cut so deep that the root plate goes, or the layers fall apart in the pan.
- The saute-panA wide, shallow pan with a heavy base, not a deep frying pan. The onions need to sit in a single layer with room to be turned; crowded, they steam and stay pale.
- Butter and sugarThe recipe specifies only 'a little butter and sugar'; a teaspoon or so of sugar to an ounce of butter for a pound of onions is about right. The sugar is there to caramelise the outside, not to sweeten; over medium heat, not high, or it burns before the onions colour evenly.
- Turning them over onceResist stirring. Onions left alone brown on their broad faces and keep their shape; constantly moved, they shed layers and go blotchy.
- Ten minutes in the stewThat is deliberate. Added earlier they soften and the browning is lost into the sauce. Ten minutes is enough to heat them through and let them take up a little of the gravy.
- QuantityOne pound serves five or six as a garnish, as stated — around 20 to 25 small onions. The threepence a pound is a late-Victorian price and no guide to anything now.
Browned button onions are one of the standard finishing garnishes of nineteenth-century English cookery, often said to follow French practice, where glazed onions and glazed carrots are the fixed accompaniments of a brown stew or braise. The garnish is best thought of as a component, expected to be used across dozens of dishes: the onions in a boeuf bourguignon or a navarin are made exactly this way. The word "silver" here is generally taken to describe the small white pickling onion, and it survives in the trade name silverskin, still used for the pickled sort. The insistence on adding the garnish only at the last minutes reflects a kitchen organised around components made separately and assembled at service — the same logic that produced separately cooked vegetables and separately made sauces.