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To Dress Raw Onions
Slice and chop fine, and put in weak salt and water till just before dinner. Then drain off and dress with half a teacup vinegar, two tablespoonfuls pepper vinegar, two tablespoonfuls made mustard, two tablespoonfuls white sugar, one tablespoonful salt.
Lay a large lump of ice on top, and garnish with curled parsley; which, eaten after onions, is said to remove the scent from the breath.--Mrs. S. T.
A raw onion relish, dressed sharp and sweet, meant to go alongside cold meats or a heavy dinner. The original never says how many onions, which is the first thing to settle.
- Quantity of onionsThe recipe gives no amount. The dressing as written — roughly a third of a cup of vinegar plus the other seasonings — suits about a pound of onions, three or four medium ones, chopped fine.
- Half a teacupA teacup in this period is usually reckoned at around six fluid ounces, so half a teacup is about 3 fl oz (a generous 1/3 cup, roughly 90 ml). Teacups were not standardised; treat it as an approximation and taste as you go.
- Salt, twice overThe onions already sit in salted water, and then a full tablespoon of salt goes into the dressing. That is far more than modern palates want. Salt the dressing lightly at first and correct at the end.
- Pepper vinegarVinegar steeped with hot peppers, a standing bottle in Southern kitchens and still sold as pepper sauce. Any thin cayenne-based hot sauce stands in; a thick chile paste does not.
- Made mustardPrepared mustard, mixed to a paste, not dry mustard powder. A smooth yellow or a Dijon both work; if you only have powder, mix it with a little water and let it stand ten minutes before using.
- The salt-water soakThis is the step that matters. The recipe leaves the onions in weak brine 'till just before dinner', so the soak may run an hour or more; even a short soak in weak brine pulls the harsh bite out of raw onion and softens the texture slightly. Drain well and press out the liquid, or the dressing will be watery.
- The lump of iceIt chilled the dish and, as it melted, diluted the dressing — a device from a kitchen without refrigeration. Chill the bowl and the dressed onions instead, and leave the ice out.
- ServingEnough as a condiment for six to eight at a full dinner. It is a relish, not a salad course; a couple of tablespoons per plate.
- The parsley claimChewing parsley after onions is old household lore rather than established fact. It does no harm and the curled sprigs are the garnish anyway.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions signed with initials like this one, belongs to a genre of community cookbooks in which each dish carries a neighbour's name. Dressed raw onion sat among the relishes and "made" condiments that Virginia tables kept alongside cold ham, boiled beef and game — sharp, sweet and salty all at once, in the same family as pickled cabbage and chowchow. Pepper vinegar, called for here as a matter of course, was a household staple made by dropping small hot pods into a bottle of vinegar and letting it stand; its descendants are the pepper sauces still on Southern diner tables. The lump of ice on top is a period detail worth noticing: the recipe shows that this cook, at least, expected a lump of ice to be at hand, and cooks put it to work as a chiller in the absence of anything else.