Onion Sauce, Brown
INGREDIENTS for large tureen.-6 large onions, rather more than 1/2 pint of good gravy, 2oz. of butter, salt and pepper to taste. AVERAGE COST, 6d.
ONION.
Slice and fry the onions of a pale brown in a stewpan, with the above quantity of butter, keeping them well stirred, that they do not get black. When a nice colour, pour over the gravy and let them simmer gently until tender. Now skim off every particle of fat, add the seasoning, and rub the whole through a tammy or sieve; put it back into the saucepan to warm, and, when it boils, serve.
TIME. Altogether, 1 hour.
SEASONABLE from August to March.
Note.-Where a high flavouring is liked, add 1 tablespoonful of mushroom ketchup, or a small quantity of port wine.
Onion Sauce, White (for Boiled Rabbits, Roast Shoulder of Mutton, &c.).- INGREDIENTS for sufficient for a joint.-5 large onions, or 8 middling-sized ones, 1/2 pint of melted butter made with milk, 1/2 teaspoonful of salt. AVERAGE COST, 6d. Peel the onions and put them into water to which a little salt has been added, to preserve their whiteness, and let them remain for 1/4 hour. Then put them into a stewpan, cover them with water and let them boil until tender, and, if the onions should be very strong, change the water after they have been boiling for 1/4 hour.
Drain them thoroughly, chop them and rub them through a tammy or sieve. Make 1/2 pint of melted butter with milk, and when that boils put in the onions, with a seasoning of salt; stir it till it simmers, when it will be ready to serve. If these directions are carefully attended to, this onion sauce will be delicious.
TIME. From to 1 hour to boil the onions.
SEASONABLE from August to March.
Note. To make this sauce very mild and ONIONS, PICKLED. delicate, use Spanish onions, which can be procured from the beginning of September to Christmas. 2 or 3 tablespoonfuls of cream, added just before serving, will be found to improve its appearance very much. Small onions, when very young, may be cooked whole and served in melted butter. A sieve or tammy should be kept expressly for onions; on old one answers the purpose, as it is liable to retain the flavour and smell, which of course would be excessively disagreeable in delicate preparations.
Two sauces in one entry: a brown onion sauce built on gravy, and a white one built on Mrs Beeton's "melted butter" — which is not melted butter at all. Read that point first if you are making the white version.
- "Melted butter" means a white sauceIn Victorian usage melted butter is a flour-thickened butter sauce, not plain melted butter: butter and flour worked together and let down with about 1/2 pint of liquid (here milk), simmered until it loses the raw flour taste. Beeton's own melted butter is butter-heavy, with only a spoonful or so of flour. Simply melting butter and stirring onion pulp into it will give you a broken, greasy mess.
- Imperial pintsBeeton's pint is 20 fl oz, so 1/2 pint is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups. Scale the gravy and milk accordingly or the sauces will come out thicker than intended.
- Tammy and sieveA tammy is a fine worsted straining cloth; a food mill, drum sieve, or a short burst in a blender followed by a pass through a fine strainer all do the job. Her closing note is sound — onion holds its smell, so do not use the same cloth for a delicate sweet sauce.
- Browning the onionsThe hour she allows covers the frying and the simmering together. Slice thinly and keep them moving over medium heat; any black flecks turn bitter and cannot be strained out, since the whole lot gets puréed.
- Skimming the fatTwo ounces of butter plus the fat in the gravy will pool on the surface. Skimming matters more here than in most sauces because the purée will emulsify the fat back in if you leave it, and the sauce turns greasy on the plate.
- Changing the waterBoiling the white onions in fresh water after fifteen minutes draws out some of the sulphur compounds. Onions sold today are likely to be milder than strong winter keepers, so taste before deciding — one change is usually plenty, and each one costs you sweetness.
- Mushroom ketchupThe optional flavouring is the old salty, spiced mushroom liquor, not tomato ketchup. Some specialist grocers still sell it; a spoonful of Worcestershire sauce or a little soy gives a comparable savoury lift, though not the same flavour.
- Spanish onionsHer recommendation for the mild version simply means a large sweet onion. Any large yellow or Spanish-type onion works; the point is bulk and low pungency.
- YieldThe liquid in each version is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 cups, but the onion purée adds considerably to that; she calls the brown quantity enough for a large tureen and the white sufficient for a joint. Both thicken as they stand and take a splash of milk or gravy to loosen on reheating.
Onion sauce is one of the oldest fixtures of the English table, and by Beeton's day it had settled into a pair of standard partners: the white for boiled rabbits and roast shoulder of mutton, the brown for other roast and grilled meats. The white version is essentially the sauce known in French cookery, by a term already current in the early nineteenth century, as soubise — a name generally traced to the eighteenth-century Prince de Soubise, though the association is traditional rather than documented. The "seasonable from August to March" note is a reminder of how a kitchen worked before cold storage: onions were lifted in late summer, dried, and hung or stored in a cool shed, and by spring the surviving bulbs had begun to sprout and soften. Beeton's careful worry about pungency, and her instruction to change the boiling water, reflects a period when onions were a keeping crop of uneven strength rather than a uniform supermarket item, and when a sauce made from strong late-season stock could easily overwhelm the joint it was meant to accompany.