Onion Soup
To This is both nourishing and soothing. Slice 6 large white onions, put in a frying-pan with 2 tablespoonfuls of butter and stir often until slightly colored. Add 1/2 cupful of flour and stir until moderately browned. Add 3 potatoes freshly boiled and riced, then, gradually, 3 pints of hot milk. Season well with salt, white pepper and 1/2 teaspoonful of sugar and simmer for ten minutes. Serve with fried bread croutons.
A milk-based onion soup thickened twice over, with flour and with riced potato — a frugal, filling formula rather than the clear beef-broth onion soup of French cooking. A few points make the difference between velvety and pasty.
- The flour is the hingeHalf a cup of flour against two tablespoons of butter is far more flour than fat, so it will not form a smooth roux; it will coat the onions as a dry dust. Keep the pan moving over moderate heat until it smells nutty, and expect to work the lumps out as the milk goes in.
- Add the milk in stagesThree pints (six cups) of hot milk poured in all at once over a floury pan invites lumps. Add the first cup slowly, whisking to a thick paste, then loosen with the rest. The recipe specifies hot milk; adding it gradually is what keeps the mixture smooth.
- Riced potatoesA potato ricer presses boiled potato through fine holes; a food mill on the coarse plate does the same. Do not use a food processor or blender, which turns potato gluey. Three medium potatoes, about 1 lb, is a reasonable reading.
- ScorchingMilk plus flour plus potato starch sticks and burns readily. Use a heavy pan, keep the ten-minute simmer at a bare tremble, and stir across the bottom of the pot rather than around the sides.
- "Slightly colored"The onions want softening and a pale gold, not the deep mahogany of French onion soup — a matter of fifteen minutes or more over medium heat, depending on the pan. Six large onions is roughly 3 lb, a great deal for one pan; use a wide skillet or cook in two batches.
- White pepper and sugarWhite pepper keeps the soup pale, where ground black pepper will speckle it, and the half teaspoon of sugar reads as a lift for the onions rather than a sweetener. Both are worth keeping.
- Consistency and yieldAs written this comes out closer to a thick chowder than a soup. Thin with additional hot milk or water to taste. It makes well over 2 quarts, serving six generously.
- CroutonsCubes of stale bread fried in butter until crisp, added at the table. Added early they dissolve into the already-thick soup.
Onion soup of this kind has little to do with the gratin"ed Parisian version; it belongs instead to the family of milk soups " potato, corn, celery, oyster " that filled out inexpensive suppers when meat stock was scarce or dear. Onions, potatoes, flour, milk and butter were among the more affordable stores in a household kitchen, and thickening a soup with both roux and riced potato was a straightforward way to make a small amount of dairy stretch to feed a table. The opening line, "nourishing and soothing," is characteristic of the era's invalid cookery, where bland, warm, milky dishes were prescribed for the sick and convalescent; onions in particular carried a long folk reputation, traditional rather than documented, as a remedy for coughs and colds, which may have something to do with this soup's recommendation.