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ONIONS, STUFFED (another way)
Prepare three or four large Spanish onions as in the last recipe. Scoop out the centres, making a hole fully an inch and a half across. Put in each one a mutton kidney, and place the onions side by side in a saucepan. Sprinkle a little salt and cayenne over them, and pour upon them half a pint of good brown gravy. Place the pan over a gentle fire, and let it remain until the onions are quite tender. Serve as hot as possible. Time to simmer the onions, two and a half or three hours. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for three persons.
A stovetop braise of whole onions each hiding a kidney, from an era when offal was everyday food. The main adjustments are the missing back-reference, the length of the simmer, and the small amount of liquid.
- "As in the last recipe"The back-reference is to the preceding stuffed-onion entry, which very likely has the onions peeled and parboiled before stuffing. Simmer the peeled Spanish onions 10-15 minutes in salted water, then drain and cool before scooping, or the raw centres will resist the spoon and the outer layers will split later.
- Half a pint of gravyAn imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, roughly 1¼ cups. For three or four large onions in a snug pan that is a shallow braising liquid rather than a poaching bath, so keep the lid on and add a little stock if it threatens to catch.
- Mutton kidneyMutton kidneys are not sold in most shops now; lamb kidneys are the direct substitute, and two small ones will fill a cavity that one mutton kidney once did. Halve them, snip out the white core and any fat, and rinse well.
- The timingTwo and a half to three hours is right for the onions, which need that long to go silky, but it is far past the point where kidney is at its best. Kidney turns dry and granular after 30-40 minutes of moist heat; expect a well-cooked, soft-textured filling rather than a pink one, and accept it as the character of the dish.
- Gentle fireA bare simmer is the whole point, and a modern gas burner is hard to hold that low for three hours. A covered casserole in a 300F oven gives steadier, all-round heat and is much less likely to scorch the gravy underneath.
- The cavityAn inch and a half across leaves only two or three onion layers as the wall. Cut it smaller if your onions are less than about 4 inches wide, or they will collapse before the end of the braise.
- Brown gravy"Good brown gravy" here means a proper meat-based sauce, not thin stock; the kidneys and onions will not thicken it themselves. A well-reduced beef or lamb stock, lightly thickened, gives the coating consistency intended.
- YieldThree onions for three people, served with the reduced gravy spooned over. Mashed potato or a plain boiled starch suits it, since the dish is otherwise all allium and offal.
Cassell's ran onions as a vegetable to be stuffed rather than merely chopped into other things, and the Spanish onion was the variety of choice for it: large, mild and thick-layered enough to hollow out and hold together through hours of heat. Pairing them with kidney reflects a period when offal was cheap protein rather than a delicacy: the dish was reckoned to feed three for eighteen pence, at a time when kidneys were a standard breakfast and grill item in British households. The technique is a straightforward long braise, the same principle said to lie behind other stuffed vegetables of the period: hollow a watery vegetable, fill it with something richer, and cook the two slowly enough that they exchange flavour.