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French Onion Soup
6 MEDIUM ONIONS, SLICED THIN 3 TABLESPOONS BUTTER 3 PINTS BOUILLON BREAD, SLICED THIN 1/2 CUP GRATED HARD CHEESE SALT AND PEPPER Melt butter in pan, add onions and fry until soft and dark brown. Add bouillon, bring to boiling point, season and simmer 20 minutes. To be properly French, the bread, after a sprinkling of cheese, should be floated on top of each bowl and toasted just before serving. The best cheese for this is Italian Parmesan.
A compact version of the classic, written for cooking over a fire or camp stove. The recipe's brevity hides the one step that decides whether it tastes like onion soup or hot broth.
- The onions are the whole dish"Fry until soft and dark brown" is 30 to 45 minutes over low to medium heat, stirred often, not the five minutes the wording suggests. Rushing them over high heat scorches the edges and leaves the soup bitter and thin-tasting.
- QuantityThree pints is 6 cups of liquid. Six medium onions sliced thin come to roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb, which cooks down to about 2 cups.
- BouillonHere this means a light meat stock rather than a cube. Cubes or concentrate will work but arrive already salty, so season only at the end.
- Butter quantityThree tablespoons is on the lean side for this weight of onion. A pan wide enough to hold the slices in a shallow layer matters more than extra fat, since a crowded pot steams them instead of browning them.
- Deglaze before adding the stockThe brown film left on the pan bottom carries most of the flavor. Splash in a little of the bouillon and scrape it loose before the rest goes in.
- Toasting the breadDry the slices out first, on a grate or in a 350F oven, or they collapse into the broth. Under a broiler the cheese needs 2 to 3 minutes; over a campfire, hold the bowls close enough to a bed of coals to melt the top without boiling the soup.
- CheeseHalf a cup of grated Parmesan is a modest amount spread over several bowls. Gruyere or a Swiss-style cheese melts into strands where Parmesan mostly browns; either is defensible.
- YieldSix cups of soup serves four generously or six as a first course.
Onion soup thickened with bread is one of the oldest thrift dishes in French cooking, built from three things almost any kitchen had: onions, stale bread and whatever broth the pot yielded. Its reputation as a Parisian late-night restorative is generally traced to the market district of Les Halles, where the all-night stalls fed porters and returning revelers alike. The gratineed version, with cheese browned over the top, is the one that traveled abroad.