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Pepper, Salt, and Castor Sugar
Six large Onions. Half a pint of Milk. Half a pint of White Sauce. One gill of Cream. Peel and slice the onions, boil them in the milk till quite tender, then press out all the milk and rub them through a hair-sieve; put them into a stewpan with the white sauce and reduce it to half the quantity, stir in the cream, pepper, salt, and a little castor sugar. This sauce is now ready for use.
This is a soubise in all but name, printed in the terse house style of professional Victorian kitchens: no quantities, because the cook was expected to know them. A few points make it workable at a domestic stove.
- What is missingThe original gives no measures at all. A serviceable working ratio is 1 lb peeled onions, milk to cover (about 2 cups), 1 cup white sauce and 2-4 tablespoons cream. Because the mixture is reduced by half, the finished quantity is modest -- enough for four or so; scale up if you need more.
- White sauceIn books of this kind that usually means a béchamel: equal butter and flour cooked to a blond roux and let down with milk, seasoned and simmered until it no longer tastes of flour. Some kitchens used a light veal stock instead, which gives something closer to a velouté. Make it before you start the onions.
- Castor sugarSuperfine sugar. It is here as a seasoning, not a sweetener: a scant teaspoon at most, to round off the sulphurous edge of the onion. Granulated dissolves perfectly well in a hot sauce.
- Hair sieveA fine horsehair drum sieve, worked with a wooden mushroom. A fine-mesh sieve and the back of a ladle does the same job; a food mill is faster, and a blender gives a smoother result than any Victorian kitchen could manage, though the sieve still catches stray fibres.
- Boiling in milkMilk scorches the moment it catches. Keep the pan at a bare tremble, stir now and then, and give the onions 20-30 minutes until they collapse under a spoon. Do not throw away the strained milk — it is sweet and oniony and can be used to thin the finished sauce.
- Reducing to halfThis is the hinge. The onion purée carries a great deal of water, and without the reduction the sauce is thin and raw-tasting. Reduce over moderate heat, stirring constantly, until it coats a spoon heavily; only then add the cream, which should be warmed through but not boiled hard.
- Onion choiceUse mild yellow or Spanish onions. Modern sweet varieties can be very sweet indeed, so taste before adding any sugar at all.
- ServingTraditionally sent to table with roast or boiled mutton, and equally good with lamb, rabbit or eggs. It thickens as it cools; loosen with the reserved milk rather than more cream.
Onion sauce bound with b y smooth is what French kitchens call soubise, a name generally traced to the eighteenth-century Prince de Soubise, whose household cooks are traditionally credited with it — the attribution is repeated everywhere and documented nowhere very firmly. What is certain is that by the late nineteenth century the sauce had been thoroughly absorbed into British high-class cookery, where it sat alongside the older, plainer English onion sauce served with mutton: chopped onions in milk, thickened with flour and butter, no sieving and no reduction. Much of the difference between the two lies in labour. Pushing boiled onions through a hair sieve and then standing over a stewpan to reduce the sauce by half is the kind of work only a staffed kitchen could spare.