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Fried Onions
6 onions Salt and pepper 1 tablespoon butter Remove the skins from the onions; cut them in slices and cook in boiling salted water for fifteen minutes. Drain; add the butter and fry until well browned, stirring to prevent them from sticking. Season and serve with beefsteak or calf's liver.
A two-stage method — parboil, then fry — that produces something closer to soft, deeply browned onions than to a crisp fried ring. The ingredient list as printed is incomplete, so the quantities need a decision from you.
- Missing quantityThe recipe names no number of onions; only the salt, pepper and butter survive in the list. Reckon on one medium yellow onion per person, which suits the tablespoon of butter for about three or four onions.
- Why parboil at allFifteen minutes in boiling salted water draws off some of the pungent sulphur compounds and softens the onion through, so it turns sweeter and more tender rather than scorching at the edges while still raw inside. It also means they will not crisp — expect a soft, glossy result.
- Drain hardThis is the hinge. Wet onions will steam in the pan instead of browning and the butter will spit. Drain in a colander, then spread them on a towel for a few minutes before they go into the fat.
- Butter alone will struggleOne tablespoon of butter for a pan of damp onions browns and burns quickly at frying heat. A spoonful of neutral oil alongside it, or clarified butter, gives you the browning without the milk solids blackening.
- Slice thicknessCut about 1/4 inch thick. Thinner slices fall apart during the boiling stage and turn to a purée in the pan.
- Heat and timeMedium-high heat, 10 to 15 minutes, stirring as directed. The instruction to stir is not incidental — softened onions stick and catch fast once the pan is hot.
- ServingThe recipe directs it to beefsteak or calf's liver, so it is meant to accompany a meat rather than stand alone. Season at the end, since the boiling water has already salted them.
The dish belongs to the long partnership of onions with liver and steak that runs through nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Anglo-American cooking, where a sharp allium was a common foil for rich organ meat and for plain-broiled beef. The parboiling step may reflect an older habit: onions before modern sweet cultivars and controlled storage could be harsher than what is sold today, and blanching them in salted water was one remedy.