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Onion Soup Gratinee
3 onions
Pepper and salt
3 tablespoons butter
⅛ clove garlic (if desired)
3 pints beef stock
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
3 tablespoons grated cheese
¼ loaf French bread
Slice onions and put them into a stew-pan with butter. Stir and fry slowly until softened and slightly browned. Add beef stock, boil ten minutes, skim, season, and add parsley and garlic. Cut the bread into thin slices, dry in the oven a few minutes, pour soup into a low earthen casserole, put bread on top, sprinkle with grated cheese, and set in a very hot oven just long enough to brown the cheese.
A compact version of the classic French soupe à l'oignon gratinée, written for cooks who already knew how to brown an onion. The proportions are sound; the timings are where the recipe under-sells the work.
- Brown the onions properlyThis is the hinge. The recipe gives no time for "stir and fry slowly until softened and slightly browned"; allow 30 to 45 minutes over low-to-medium heat. Pale onions give a thin, sharp soup; the sweetness and colour come from this step.
- Ten minutes is shortBoiling the stock ten minutes is enough to warm it through, but 20 to 30 minutes at a bare simmer marries the onion and stock far better. The skimming instruction refers to the foam and fat that rise once the stock comes up.
- Beef stockThree pints is six cups, serving four generously. Home-made brown stock is the likely assumption; if using commercial broth, choose low-sodium, since the cheese and bread add plenty of salt.
- An eighth of a clove of garlicA very timid measure; garlic was generally used sparingly in Anglo-American home cooking of this period. A whole clove, crushed and added with the onions, is closer to French practice.
- The casseroleHere "a low earthen casserole" means a shallow ovenproof earthenware or stoneware dish, not a covered baking dish in the modern sense. Individual oven-safe bowls work identically and are easier to serve.
- A very hot ovenRead that as 450 to 475°F. Alternatively run the dish under a broiler for two to three minutes, which browns the cheese without heating the soup to the point where it boils over.
- The cheese"Grated cheese" here may well mean Parmesan. Gruyere or a Gruyere-Parmesan mix melts into the sheet-like crust most people now expect; three tablespoons is sparse, and half a cup is not excessive.
- Drying the breadThe recipe says only "a few minutes"; use a moderate oven and dry the slices until crisp all through. Bread that is merely warm dissolves into the soup instead of supporting the cheese.
Onion soup thickened with bread is far older than its Parisian reputation: onions, stale bread and whatever broth was to hand made a standard cheap supper across France for centuries, and the gratineed version with a cheese crust is generally traced to the market district of Les Halles, where it was eaten by porters and by late-night revellers who came to watch them. Its appearance in an American household manual reflects the period's enthusiasm for restaurant French cooking filtered into domestic kitchens — note that the garlic is hedged down to an eighth of a clove. The name describes the finish: gratine, browned on top, conventionally derived from the French gratter, to scrape.