Home › Entrées › Baked Onions in Ramekins
Baked Onions in Ramekins
Peel and parboil twelve medium-sized onions; drain; chop. Melt two tablespoons butter; add two tablespoons flour, one fourth teaspoon salt, one and one quarter cups cream, or chicken stock, four tablespoons soft bread crumbs, one tablespoon finely chopped parsley. Boil five minutes; add one egg well beaten and the chopped onion. Cool slightly; add the beaten whites of two eggs; add more seasoning if needed and bake in buttered ramekin dishes twenty minutes in a moderate oven. Serve immediately.
This is a small onion soufflé baked in individual dishes, and it behaves like a soufflé: the beaten whites go in last and the dishes go straight from oven to table.
- The hinge: fold, don't stirThe whites are added after the base has cooled slightly, and only enough to combine. Beat them to soft peaks rather than stiff, and stop folding while streaks are still visible, or the mixture deflates before it sets.
- Moderate ovenIn period usage that means roughly 350-375F; the book gives no figures. Twenty minutes suits small ramekins (around 6 oz, filled about two-thirds, though the recipe specifies neither size nor number); the tops should be puffed and set with no liquid wobble at the centre.
- Parboil properlyThe recipe gives no time; reckon on roughly 10-15 minutes at a boil for twelve medium onions to lose their raw bite, then drain thoroughly. Wet onions will make the mixture slack and it will not rise.
- Chop fine and squeezeAfter chopping, press the onions in a sieve or twist them in a towel. Onions hold a surprising amount of water and this is the difference between a light entrée and a sodden one.
- Cream or chicken stockCream gives a richer, more stable base; stock makes a lighter, more savoury one that may need extra salt. Either way the two tablespoons of flour to one and a quarter cups of liquid make a medium white sauce, thickened further by the breadcrumbs -- coating rather than thin.
- Temper the whole eggThe instruction to add one beaten egg to the just-boiled sauce works best if you stir a spoonful of hot sauce into the egg first, then return it. Added cold and direct, it can set into threads.
- Yield and servingThe recipe states no yield; twelve onions plus the sauce will fill a good many small dishes, so plan on eight or more as a first or side course. 'Serve immediately' is not politeness -- these fall within a few minutes of leaving the oven.
Lowney's Cook Book was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and ranges far beyond the product it was meant to sell. In American menus of the period an entree meant a small made dish served between heavier courses rather than the main event. Individual porcelain or earthenware dishes let a hostess serve a souffle-type mixture in portions that arrived at the table still risen, an answer to the short life of a large souffle. Onions dressed up this way -- parboiled, bound in a thick white sauce, lightened with egg white -- take a cheap and rather plain vegetable and give it the treatment usually reserved for cheese or fish.