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Spanish Onions-Stuffed
6 medium Spanish onions. 1 cup minced or ground cold meat. 1/2 cup bread crumbs. 1 cup water. 1 heaping tablespoon butter. Pepper and salt to taste. Parboil onions until tender or cut out the center before cooking. Chop the pieces. Add a few bread crumbs, some minced ham, chicken or veal, or both. Season highly with salt and pepper. Moisten with melted butter. Fill cavities of onion, put in baking dish, pour over this a little water or cream. Put in stove and bake until tender and brown, after sprinkling top with bread crumbs.
A straightforward stuffed vegetable, but the ingredient list and the method disagree in places — the list is a summary, the paragraph is the actual procedure. Follow the paragraph.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given. Bake at 375F, covered for the first 30 minutes and uncovered for another 20 to 30, until a knife slides easily into the onion wall and the crumb topping has colored.
- Hollow the onions firstThe text allows either order: parboil whole until tender, or "cut out the center before cooking." The second is easier to work with, since an onion boiled soft tends to collapse when cored. Slice off the top, scoop with a melon baller or paring knife leaving two or three layers of wall, then parboil the shells 8 to 10 minutes.
- Spanish onionsStill sold under that name — large, pale, mild and sweet. A medium one runs 8 to 10 oz. Vidalia or other sweet onions work; a sharp yellow cooking onion will dominate the filling.
- Cold meatThis is a leftover recipe. Any cooked ham, chicken or veal, minced by hand or pulsed in a processor. Do not use raw ground meat — the bake time here assumes the filling is already cooked and only needs heating through.
- The cup of waterEnough liquid to film the bottom of the dish and keep the onion bottoms from scorching; the paragraph asks only for "a little water or cream." Cream, as offered in the text, reduces into a sauce and is the better choice if you have it.
- Butter and moistureOne heaping tablespoon of melted butter for six onions is barely enough to bind a cup of meat and half a cup of crumbs. Add a few spoonfuls of stock, gravy or cream until the mixture holds together when pressed.
- Season highlyTake this literally. The onion is sweet and watery and the filling is bland cooked meat; underseasoning is the usual failure. A little mustard, thyme or grated cheese is within the spirit of the dish.
- YieldSix onions serve six as a side dish, or three as a light main course with bread and a salad.
Stuffed onions belong to a large family of turn-of-the-century "made dishes" whose real subject is the remains of Sunday's roast. Mrs. Wilson wrote for American households during and just after the First World War, when she was closely associated with wartime conservation campaigns; recipes that convert a cup of cold ham or chicken into a dinner for six were the whole point of her work. Large mild onions had been marketed in the United States as "Spanish onions" by the later nineteenth century, the name pointing to their Mediterranean type rather than any guarantee of origin. The technique itself is old and widely shared: hollowing a vegetable, filling it with seasoned meat and crumbs, and browning the top is the same logic applied to peppers, tomatoes and marrows across European and Near Eastern cooking.