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Stewed Onions
1 quart onions 3/4 cup milk 2 tablespoons butter 1/4 teaspoon salt Peel the onions under cold water, cook in boiling, salted water, changing the water at the end of five minutes, and again at the end of ten to remove the strong flavor. Cook uncovered until tender. Drain, add milk and butter, and cook fifteen minutes.
A plain creamed onion dish from the era when onions were expected to be tamed rather than caramelized. The water changes are the whole method, and they cost you flavor as well as harshness.
- A quart of onionsMeasured by volume, not by weight. The recipe does not say what size; small whole boiling onions would suit the method, and a quart of them is roughly 1 1/4 to 1 3/4 lb before peeling, enough for about four as a side.
- Peeling under cold waterAn old trick to keep the sulfur compounds from reaching your eyes, and it still works. Trim the root end last so the layers hold together during the long boil.
- The water changesTwo changes, at five and ten minutes, were meant to strip the pungency. Modern cooks generally skip this: repeated boiling and draining leaches out sweetness and water-soluble vitamins along with the bite. One change, or none, gives a better onion.
- Cook uncoveredThe instruction is as written, though the book gives no reason. An open pot lets volatile sulfur compounds escape rather than condensing back into the water, which fits the flavor-taming aim of the water changes.
- Tender means tenderWhole small onions take 20 to 30 minutes in boiling water depending on size. Test with a skewer through the center; underdone onions stay sharp and fibrous no matter how long they sit in milk afterward.
- The final fifteen minutesWith only 3/4 cup milk and no flour, this stage is a reduction, not a sauce. Keep it at a bare simmer and stir now and then, or the milk will scorch on the bottom and break. If you want the thicker creamed onion of many period recipes, whisk a tablespoon of flour into the butter first.
- SeasoningA quarter teaspoon of salt for a quart of boiled onions is thin. The recipe already salts the cooking water; correct again at the end. Pepper and a scrape of nutmeg are traditional and welcome.
Meatless Cookery belongs to a wave of American wartime and vegetarian cookbooks in which vegetables were promoted into the center of the plate. The triple boiling reflects a long-standing Anglo-American suspicion of strong flavors, especially onion, which was thought coarse and socially awkward on the breath; some nineteenth-century household manuals instruct cooks to change the water once or twice. Creamed onions themselves are older than the anxiety, and are still the standard American holiday treatment, generally traced to the English tradition of serving small boiled onions in a white sauce alongside roast meat.