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Onions, Fried
Put three ounces of butter in a frying-pan. Peel some Spanish onions, and cut them as thinly as possible into rings, put them in the pan, turn and shake them about until they are of a nice brown colour and quite soft, which will be in about half an hour; sprinkle a little sauce over, and serve very hot.
A plain recipe for what amounts to slow-fried onions rather than modern caramelised onions, though the half-hour is generous enough to get partway there. The only real decisions are pan size and heat.
- QuantitiesThree ounces of butter is about 6 tablespoons, 85 g. The recipe gives no quantity of onion; two or three large Spanish onions, roughly 1.5 lb peeled, suits that much butter, spread in a single loose layer.
- Spanish onionsStill sold under that name in Britain: the large, pale, mild-flavoured onion. A supermarket yellow onion is the nearest everyday substitute. They are milder and wetter than a strong cooking onion, which is why they brown readily and cook down so far.
- "Cut them as thinly as possible"This is the hinge. Thick rings will still be firm after half an hour while the edges burn. Slice about 2 mm on a mandoline or with a sharp knife, and keep the rings intact rather than chopping.
- Heat and timingHalf an hour is realistic only over medium to medium-low heat. On high heat the butter's milk solids blacken within minutes. If the pan runs dry before the onions soften, a spoonful of water loosens the browned residue and steams them along.
- "A little sauce"Ambiguous as printed. It may mean a spoonful of a brown sauce or gravy, or simply seasoning; the text does not say. Season with salt at the end either way.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; onions cook down to a fraction of their raw bulk, so this is a garnish quantity rather than a vegetable dish. The recipe directs that it be served very hot.
Fried onions of this kind belonged to the chophouse and the grill more than the kitchen proper. The large mild Spanish onion had become widely available in Britain through nineteenth-century imports from Spain, and its sweetness made it the standard choice where a strong pungent onion would have overwhelmed grilled meat. The instruction to "turn and shake them about" for half an hour describes keeping the onions moving so that the butter does not burn hem manieve with the burner dial instead.