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Onion Porridge
Peel a large Spanish onion, divide it into four, and put it into a saucepan with 1/2 salt-spoonful of salt, 2 ounces of butter, and 1 pint of cold water. Let it simmer gently until it is quite tender, then pour it into a heated bowl, dredge a little pepper over it, and eat it as hot as possible just before going to bed. Time to boil the onion, about half an hour. Sufficient for one person. A country remedy for a cold in the head.
This is a one-bowl invalid dish rather than a porridge in the oatmeal sense: a whole sweet onion simmered in buttered water until collapsing, eaten as a hot broth. It needs almost no adjustment beyond understanding the measures.
- Salt-spoonfulA salt-spoon was the smallest spoon on the Victorian table, roughly a quarter teaspoon. Half of one is a pinch, and the seasoning is meant to be light so the onion sweetness carries.
- A pint of waterIf the book is British, a pint is 20 fl oz; American practice is 16 fl oz. Either works here, since the liquid is the point of the dish, but the smaller amount gives a more concentrated broth.
- Spanish onionA large mild yellow onion, sold at most groceries as a Spanish or sweet onion, 12 oz to a pound. A sharp cooking onion will taste harsh in a preparation this plain.
- Simmer, do not boilThe recipe says to let it simmer gently, and gives about half an hour. A hard boil will break the quarters up; a bare simmer takes them to the 'quite tender' the original asks for.
- Two ounces of butterThat is half a standard 4 oz stick, about 4 tablespoons, and it is a lot for one pint of water. It gives the broth its body; reducing it turns the dish thin and watery.
- Yield and servingOne serving, as the original says. Turn the whole potful, onion and liquid together, into a warmed bowl and eat it with a spoon while very hot.
- The health claimTake the closing line as period folk medicine, not advice. Hot broth is soothing to a stuffed head, but it does nothing to a cold beyond that.
Onion water, onion tea and onion porridge appear all through nineteenth-century domestic manuals in the same breath as gruel, barley water and beef tea: cheap, soft, hot things given to the sick and to children, and taken at bedtime in the belief that they would sweat out a chill. The onion had a long-standing reputation in English and Irish country practice as a remedy for coughs and head colds, which is why a recipe of this kind serves one and is timed to bedtime rather than to dinner. "Porridge" here means only a soft spoonable dish, an older and broader use of the word than the oat porridge it now implies. The generous butter and the single large Spanish onion, valued for its mildness and size, mark it as a comfort worth spending a little on even when its purpose was medicinal.