“The sultan sent to our camp some bowls of food, soup, and a fowl cut up and cooked in gravy, very rich with oil and onions. It would have been good but for the stuffy, bitter taste of myrrh, which they like so much to put in their food. He also sent us red cakes of millet bread.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
1130. INGREDIENTS.--1/2 lb. of onions, 1/3 pint of water, 1/2 lb. of moist sugar, 1/3 pint of vinegar. _Mode_.--Peel and chop the onions fine, and put them into a stewpan (not tinned), with the water; let them boil for 5 minutes, then add the sugar, and simmer gently until the mixture becomes nearly black and throws out bubbles of smoke. Have ready the above proportion of boiling vinegar, strain the liquor gradually to it, and keep stirring with a wooden spoon until it is well incorporated. When cold, bottle for use. _Time_.--Altogether, 1 hour. PROPERTIES OF THE ONION.--The onion is possessed of a white, acrid, volatile oil, holding sulphur in solution, albumen, a good deal of uncrystallizable sugar and mucilage; phosphoric acid, both free and combined with lime; acetic acid, citrate of lime, and lignine.
Sources: The passage is from J. Theodore (James Theodore) Bent, Southern Arabia, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Beeton, The Book of Household Management of 1861, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — moss cloth, sheaf stamp.