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Soubise Sauce, Brown
Peel and wash twelve onions clean, then mince them, and fry them in a stewpan with a little butter till very brown. Moisten with some Spanish sauce, if you have any; if not, sprinkle with two spoonfuls of flour mixed with some veal or beef gravy. Skim off the fat, season the puree well with salt and pepper, then strain it through an old tamis, for these sort of purees would destroy new ones, and will always leave the taste of onions.
A brown onion puree thickened either with espagnole or with a quick flour-and-gravy liaison. The whole dish rests on how far the onions are taken in the butter: too pale and it tastes raw, too dark and the bitterness carries straight through the sieve.
- Spanish sauceThis is sauce espagnole, the brown mother sauce built on a brown roux and rich brown stock. The recipe treats it as something that may or may not be standing ready ("if you have any"); the fallback given here, two spoonfuls of flour slaked with veal or beef gravy, is the practical route.
- Twelve onionsOnion sizes vary, and twelve unspecified onions might come to something in the region of 2 lb as sold today. The recipe gives no measure for the moistening sauce or gravy, so the finished volume is left to the cook.
- Frying "till very brown"This wants low to moderate heat and a good twenty-five to forty minutes, stirring often. Onions browned fast over high heat scorch at the edges while staying raw in the middle, and the bitterness is not removed by straining.
- SpoonfulsPeriod spoon measures were not standardised, so two spoonfuls of flour is at best an approximate indication; against this quantity of onions it gives a light body only. The onion puree itself does most of the thickening.
- TamisA tamis is a drum sieve, a fine cloth or wire mesh stretched on a wooden hoop, and the puree is worked through it with a wooden mushroom or a scraper. The instruction to use an old one is sound: onion and garlic scents lodge in the fabric permanently. A food mill on the fine plate does the same job now, and a blender followed by a conical strainer is finer still.
- SkimmingSkim after the liquid has come to a bare simmer and settled for a minute or two, so the butter fat gathers at the edge of the pan. Fat left in will separate and float once the sauce is held warm.
- ServingBrown soubise belongs with mutton, lamb cutlets, roast duck and grilled kidneys. It thickens noticeably as it cools; loosen with a little stock when reheating rather than adding more flour.
Soubise is generally traced to the household of the Princes de Soubise in eighteenth-century France, the name attaching to any preparation dominated by a smooth onion puree, and it entered the English repertoire through the French-trained cooks who staffed grand kitchens here. The more familiar version is white, an onion puree bound with bechamel or with rice and cream; this brown variant swaps in espagnole and takes the onions much further in the pan, giving a sauce closer to a refined onion gravy. The aside about the tamis is a reminder of how kitchen equipment was managed before disposable linings and dishwashers, with individual sieves retired to strong-flavoured duty once they had absorbed onion.