Onion Soup
- INGREDIENTS for soup for 6 persons.-6 large onions, 2 oz. of butter, salt and pepper to taste, 1/2 pint of cream, 1 quart of stock. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 6d.
Chop the onions, put them in the butter, stir them occasionally, but do not let them brown. When tender, put the stock to them and season; strain the soup and add the boiling cream.
TIME. hour.
SEASONABLE in cold weather.
A short, rich soup that is closer to a French soupe à l'oignon blanche than to the brown, cheese-crusted version most cooks expect. Two things matter: the onions must sweat without colouring, and the cream goes in at the very end.
- Keep the onions paleThe instruction not to let them brown is the hinge of the recipe. Cook them covered over low heat in the butter for 20-30 minutes until completely soft and translucent; any colour turns this into a different soup with a different flavour.
- Quantities in modern termsHalf a pint is 10 fl oz (about 1 1/4 cups) of cream, and a quart of stock is 40 fl oz (5 cups) by imperial measure — roughly 1.1 litres. Six large onions is somewhere between 2 and 3 lb peeled.
- "Time. hour"The number before "hour" is missing from the text as it stands. Allow 30 minutes to sweat the onions and 20-30 minutes of simmering once the stock is in.
- StrainingAs written the onions are discarded and only the flavoured, thickened liquid is served, which gives a very thin soup by modern standards. Pressing the onions through the sieve, or blending before straining, produces the smooth pale purée most cooks would now want.
- Don't boil the cream inThe cream is heated separately — the original says boiling — and added to the finished soup rather than cooked in it, so the soup is not boiled hard once enriched; prolonged boiling of cream in a seasoned soup risks it splitting.
- StockThe recipe does not say which stock. A pale stock, veal or chicken, suits the soup; a good unsalted chicken stock is the closest substitute, and a dark beef stock will overwhelm the onions.
- SeasoningWith no wine, cheese or herbs, the soup lives on salt, pepper and the sweetness of the onions. The recipe seasons as soon as the stock goes in.
- YieldSix small servings as a first course, or four as a light supper with bread.
Onion soup runs through nineteenth-century English cookbooks in two families: the clear brown kind, built on beef stock and often poured over toasted bread in the French manner, and the white kind seen here, enriched with cream. The pale version follows the French method of onions cooked in butter without colour, and similar soups turn up in Victorian books under names such as white onion soup or soupe à la Soubise. Onions stored well through the winter, which may be part of why the entry is marked "seasonable in cold weather". Of the 1s. 6d., the cream and the stock would have accounted for most of the cost; onions were among the cheapest things a household bought.