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Onions on Toast
1 dozen small Spanish onions 6 slices of toast 1 pint of white sauce or cream sauce Remove the skins of the onions under cold water; cook in boiling, salted water five minutes; pour off the cold water, drain, cover again with boiling, salted water. Cook one hour or until tender throughout, but not so soft that the shape is lost. Drain and serve two or three onions upon each slice of moistened toast. Prepare the sauce, and serve one or two spoonfuls of it upon each serving.
A simple creamed-onion supper dish from the meatless canon. Two things need attention: the cooking time and the odd contradiction in the original wording.
- The hour is too longThe hour looks long -- small onions of 1 to 1½ inches are usually tender in 20 to 30 minutes at a gentle simmer, and the recipe itself warns against losing the shape. Test with a skewer at 20 minutes and pull them when the centre gives; larger onions will need the longer time.
- "Pour off the cold water"The original says to cook five minutes in boiling water and then pour off the cold water — a slip in the text. The intent is a five-minute blanch, drained, then a fresh pot of boiling salted water for the long cook. The blanch tames the sulphurous edge.
- Small Spanish onionsA modern Spanish onion is a large sweet globe, so twelve of them is not what is meant here. Use boiling onions or small yellow or white onions of even size, about 1½ inches, so they cook at the same rate.
- Peeling under cold waterDone to spare the eyes, and it still works. Trim the root end flat but shallow, or the onion will fall apart in the pot.
- A pint of white sauceA pint of white sauce is two cups, which is generous for six servings. A sauce on the thicker side -- 4 tablespoons butter, 4 tablespoons flour, 2 cups milk, salt, white pepper, and nutmeg if you like it -- holds up better on toast than anything thinner.
- Moistened toast"Moistened toast" is not explained. Brushing or dipping the toast in hot milk, or in a little of the onion cooking liquid, is the likely intent, so that it does not sit dry under the sauce. Do it just before plating; earlier and it goes to paste.
- YieldSix servings as written, two or three onions each. It is a light supper or luncheon dish rather than a side, though halving the onions and pouring the sauce over makes a decent accompaniment to a roast.
Creamed onions on toast belongs to a whole family of turn-of-the-century "on toast" dishes -- eggs, mushrooms, asparagus, dried beef -- in which a slice of bread does the work that pasta or rice might do now, carrying a white sauce and making a modest quantity of vegetable into a meal. White sauce supplied richness and a sense of substance, and milk and butter were unobjectionable on a fast day or in a vegetarian household. The insistence that the onions keep their shape reflects a concern with the appearance of a served vegetable that recurs in cookery writing of the period.