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Onion Sauce
1 dessertspoonful vinegar I oz. (I heaping tablespoonful) butter I oz. (I heaping tablespoonful) flour 1/2 teaspoonful sugar 2 tablespoonfuls cream 1/2 pint (I cup) milk Peel the onions and drop them into plenty of boiling salted water, add the vinegar, and boil for a quarter of an hour. Drain and rinse them in clean warm water and chop them up. Melt the butter in a fireproof dish, stir in the flour, then gradually add the milk, and stir till they boil; add the sugar, onions, and a
A plain white sauce enriched with boiled onions, of the sort served with mutton, rabbit or boiled fowl. The printed text is garbled at both ends: the onions themselves are missing from the ingredient list, and the final sentence breaks off.
- How many onionsThe list omits them. On this scale two medium onions would be a reasonable guess, but the quantity is not recoverable from the text; much more and you have onion pur erents rather than sauce.
- The missing endingThe sentence stops at "add the sugar, onions, and a", probably some seasoning (salt and pepper, or nutmeg), followed by the cream. Stir the 2 tablespoons cream in off the heat at the end so it does not curdle.
- MeasuresA dessertspoonful is two teaspoons. An ounce of butter is about 2 tablespoons rather than the "heaping tablespoonful" given; an ounce of flour is bulkier still, nearer 3 to 4 tablespoons. The parenthesis equates half a pint with 1 cup, which follows the American half-pint rather than the imperial one.
- The vinegarTwo teaspoons of vinegar in the boiling water was a common trick for keeping boiled onions pale. It is evidently not meant as a seasoning for the sauce itself, since the onions are drained and rinsed afterwards.
- Fifteen minutes is rightFifteen minutes -- A quarter of an hour will take the raw bite off the onions, though whole ones of any size may need longer to be fully tender.
- "Fireproof dish"The recipe melts the butter in it over direct heat, so a flameproof earthenware or enamelled dish is meant rather than an oven dish. Any heavy saucepan does the same job.
- The hingeCook the butter and flour together for a minute before the milk goes in, and add the milk gradually with constant stirring. A roux that has not lost its raw-flour taste will show through in a sauce this plain.
- YieldSomething under two cups once the onions are folded in, enough for about four servings alongside boiled meat.
Onion sauce is one of the oldest survivors of the English white-sauce family, served with mutton and boiled rabbit; a very similar preparation, thickened with bread rather than flour, was standard eighteenth-century fare. The rinsing step, and the vinegar in the cooking water, belong to a period that prized a sauce as white as possible: discoloration was read as carelessness.