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Onion Soup
Mince some thick onions, five or six, and let them color over the fire in butter. Add a dessertspoonful of flour, sprinkling it in, and the same amount in gravy; thicken it with potatoes and when these are cooked, peas, all through a sieve. Bring the puree to the right consistency with milk, and let it simmer for a few minutes before serving, adding pepper and salt.
A thickened onion purée rather than the clear, cheese-topped soup the name suggests. The recipe is written in the compressed style of a cook dictating from memory, so a few quantities have to be read rather than measured.
- "Thick onions"This means large, fat onions, not a variety. Five or six large yellow onions is somewhere in the region of 2 to 3 lb; the recipe gives no yield, but that quantity would serve about four.
- DessertspoonfulA dessertspoon sits between a teaspoon and a tablespoon: about 2 teaspoons. So roughly 2 teaspoons flour, and "the same amount in gravy" means the same measure again of meat gravy or stock, sprinkled and stirred in to make a paste.
- The gravy"Gravy" here most likely means meat gravy or pan juices saved from a roast rather than a made sauce. Concentrated brown stock, or a spoonful of demi-glace, does the same job. Without something in this role the soup is likely to taste thin.
- Colouring the onionsThe recipe gives no time, but a genuine golden-brown over moderate heat will take a good deal longer than the phrase "let them color" suggests -- fifteen to twenty-five minutes with regular stirring. Much of the flavour of the finished soup comes from this stage.
- Potatoes and peasOne or two floury potatoes, peeled and diced, cooked in the pan until tender; then peas added and cooked briefly. Frozen peas need only two or three minutes, and long cooking turns them grey.
- "All through a sieve"The original means pushing everything through a fine sieve with a wooden spoon or a food mill. A blender is quicker but leaves onion fibre; passing the blended soup through a sieve afterwards gets the smooth texture intended.
- Finishing with milkThin to the consistency of pouring cream and simmer only a few minutes. Once the milk is in, keep the heat low so it does not catch on the bottom of the pan.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled by Mrs. Brian Luck and published in 1915, from recipes given by Belgian refugees who had fled to England after the German invasion of 1914; sales went to relief work. That origin may explain the telegraphic style of pages like this one, with quantities left to the cook's judgement. It also explains the shape of the soup itself: browned onions, a spoonful of flour, whatever gravy the last roast left, and potatoes and peas to give body, with milk instead of a richer liquid. This is domestic Belgian cooking of the sort that turns a few cheap vegetables into a full dish, and it has nothing to do with the beef-broth-and-Gruyère soupe à l'oignon of French restaurants.