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Stewed Onions
Remove the skins from one quart of onions, throw them into cold water, put them in a saucepan, cover with stock and stew slowly one hour if young, two hours if large and old. They must be cooked until tender and soft. When done, drain and turn carefully into a vegetable dish. Put one tablespoonful of butter in a frying-pan, stir until brown; then add one tablespoonful of flour, mix, add a half pint of the stock in which the onions were boiled. Stir continually until it boils, add salt and pepper to taste, pour this over the onions and serve.
A plain braise finished with a quick brown roux sauce. The only real decisions are the size of the onions and how brown you take the butter.
- A quart of onionsOnions were commonly measured by volume in this period. A quart measure holds roughly a pound to a pound and a half of small whole onions; the count varies a good deal with size, and the dish would serve about four as a side.
- Keep them whole and uniformThe recipe appears to assume onions cooked whole, and it allows for large old ones at the longer time. If you cut large ones into halves or quarters so they cook evenly, expect the shorter end of the timing.
- StockAny light meat stock, or vegetable stock for a meatless version. It should just cover the onions; too much and the cooking liquid you reserve for the sauce will be thin and weak.
- TimingAn hour of slow simmering is right for small onions; two hours is for large, old, coarse ones and will reduce small ones to mush. Test with a knife tip -- they should yield with no resistance but still hold their shape.
- The browned butterThis is the hinge. The butter must be taken to a genuine nut brown before the flour goes in, and then the roux cooked a minute or two more, or the sauce tastes of raw flour and looks grey. Milk solids scorch quickly, so use a low flame and keep it moving.
- Half a pint of stockOne cup. With a tablespoon each of butter and flour that gives a pourable sauce rather than a thick gravy; reduce it a little longer if you want it to cling.
- DrainingDrain the onions over a bowl so the cooking liquid is kept -- it is the whole flavour of the sauce. Let them sit a moment to shed steam before saucing, or the dish will water out.
Stewed onions belong to the long tradition of English and American "boiled vegetable with sauce" -- cook until tender, drain, mask with a butter sauce -- a treatment common in nineteenth-century household manuals. What distinguishes this version is the brown roux rather than a white sauce or plain cream, which suits the onions to meat. Small whole onions were a useful winter vegetable because they kept well in a cellar. The instruction to throw the peeled onions into cold water is usually explained as a way to reduce sharpness and keep them pale, though the recipe gives no reason.