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Sage and Onions
2 pounds of onions 2 ounces of butter 2 teaspoons of powdered sage Pepper and salt 2 ounces of bread crumbs Slice the onions, and boil them until tender, then drain and chop them, and add the butter, bread-crumbs and sage. The sage must be rubbed fine through the fingers, and then shaken through a sieve before it is measured, to insure there being no bits of stalks in it. Season the mixture with pepper and salt, and bake in a baking dish for about an hour.
A stuffing mixture baked on its own as a vegetable dish. The whole thing hinges on getting the water out of the onions.
- Weights to volumes2 ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons (half a stick). 2 ounces of breadcrumbs is roughly 1 cup of fresh soft crumbs, or about 1/2 cup of dry ones; dry crumbs will absorb more onion liquid, which is no bad thing here.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Bake at 350F for the hour specified; the last 15 minutes uncovered gives a browned top.
- Drain hardTwo pounds of boiled onions carry a great deal of water. Drain in a colander, press gently, and let them steam dry for a few minutes before chopping, or the finished dish will be soupy rather than sliceable.
- The sageThe sieving instruction is not fussiness: as the recipe says, dried sage of this kind came as crumbled leaf that could carry stalk fragments, and a woody piece is unpleasant. Modern rubbed sage is already fine and needs no sieving; 2 teaspoons of it is assertive but in keeping with the quantity of onion. Ground sage is stronger still, so use closer to 1 1/2 teaspoons.
- Onion choiceOrdinary yellow storage onions boil down sweet and hold their shape when chopped. Sweet varieties collapse into more liquid and will make the mixture wetter.
- Yield and servingServes four to six as a side. It is dense and rich, and behaves best treated like a savoury pudding — served in spoonfuls beside root vegetables, gravy, or anything that would otherwise have had stuffing with it.
Sage and onion is the standard English stuffing for goose, duck and pork, and this recipe simply bakes the stuffing by itself, without the bird. The pairing of sage with onion and fat pork is old in English cookery — sage was a common kitchen-garden herb and was long held to make rich meat easier to digest, which is the traditional explanation for its place in goose stuffing. The instruction to sieve the dried sage suggests that herbs were dried at home or bought loose in leaf, rather than sold pre-ground.