Home › The Principles of Cookery › Onions, Glazed, for Garnishing Beef, Etc
Onions, Glazed, for Garnishing Beef, Etc
Take a dozen freshly-gathered large-sized onions, cut a thin slice off each end, and throw them into boiling water for a quarter of an hour. Take off the outer skin, scoop a small piece out of the middle of each onion, and put a quarter of a tea-spoonful of powdered sugar into the empty spaces thus formed. Put two or three slices of butter in a stewpan. Arrange the onions side by side in it, and place it on the fire, turning the onions two or three times that they may be equally coloured all over. When nicely browned, moisten them with half a pint of good strong stock, cover the saucepan closely, and simmer very gently until the sauce is reduced to glaze. Baste the onions frequently whilst the sauce is simmering, and keep them warm until wanted for use. Time, one hour. Probable cost, 6d. Sufficient to garnish a moderate-sized piece of beef.
A simple braise-and-glaze that still works exactly as written, provided the pan is wide enough that the onions sit in one layer and the heat stays low at the end.
- The hinge: reduce, do not boil dryThe onions are done when the stock has fallen to a syrupy film that coats them. Once it is nearly gone the sugar and stock solids will scorch within a minute, so pull the pan off the heat while there is still a spoonful of liquid moving.
- Imperial half-pintCassell's half pint is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups. Use stock with real body — a gelatinous homemade beef or veal stock will glaze on its own, while a thin commercial broth may need a longer reduction or a small knob of butter swirled in at the end.
- "A dozen large-sized onions"Twelve onions is a great deal of garnish by modern standards, and there is no way to know what size the book meant by "large." Small yellow onions or peeled shallots behave better and hold their shape.
- BlanchingA quarter of an hour in boiling water loosens the skin and takes the raw edge off, but it also part-cooks the onion. If you are using small onions, five to eight minutes is enough or they will collapse in the stewpan.
- Scooping and sugaringThe scooped hollow holds the sugar so it melts into the onion rather than burning on the pan floor. A quarter teaspoon each is right — this is a glaze, not a candied onion.
- StewpanA heavy sauté pan or shallow braiser with a tight lid. Cast iron or a thick-bottomed stainless pan browns more evenly than thin nonstick, which will not develop the colour the recipe asks for.
- Timing and yieldThe hour given presumably covers blanching, browning and reduction; the recipe does not break the time down. The book says only that this is sufficient to garnish a moderate-sized piece of beef. Leftovers reheat well in their own glaze over low heat.
Glazed onions belong to the French repertoire of garnitures that English cookery absorbed wholesale in the nineteenth century — the same family as glazed carrots and turnips, all built on the same trick of sugar, fat and reduced stock. The technique teaches reduction to a glaze, the state French kitchens call glace, where stock has thickened by evaporation alone into something that clings. The "probable cost, 6d." is characteristic of the book, which costed its dishes for households running on a budget and expected the cook to weigh the expense of a garnish against the joint it decorated.