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Stuffed Onions
6 medium to large onions
½ cup milk
½ cup chopped ham or
Pepper chopped green pepper
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup soft bread-crums
1 tablespoon fat
Fine dry bread-crums
Remove a slice from the top of each onion and parboil the onions until almost tender. Drain and remove the centers, making six little cups. Chop the onion that was scooped out and combine with it the ham and soft crums. Add seasoning and refill the onion cups. Place them in a baking-dish, cover with crums, add the milk, and bake until tender.
A straightforward stuffed vegetable, but the original leaves out both oven temperature and time, and the ingredient list is set in two columns that have run together. A few clarifications make it workable.
- The ingredient list, untangledThe two columns give: 6 medium to large onions, ½ cup chopped ham or chopped green pepper, ½ cup soft bread-crumbs, ½ cup milk, pepper, ½ teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon fat, and fine dry bread-crumbs for the top. "Crums" is simply the older spelling of crumbs.
- Oven and timeNo temperature or time is given. Around 350-375°F for 30 to 40 minutes will finish onions that have already been parboiled. They are done when a knife slips through the outer layer with no resistance and the crumb topping has browned.
- ParboilingWhole peeled onions need roughly 12 to 20 minutes in boiling salted water depending on size. "Almost tender" is the target: fully soft onions collapse when you scoop them and will not hold as cups. Cool them briefly before hollowing or they tear.
- Hollowing them outCut the top slice, then work from the center with a small spoon or a melon baller, leaving two or three outer layers intact as the wall. Keep every scrap of the removed onion; it is half the filling.
- Where the fat goesThe tablespoon of fat is never assigned a step. Work it into the filling, or use it to grease the baking dish and dot the crumb topping.
- The milkIt is poured around the onions, not into them, and it steams the bases while the tops brown. Half a cup is enough for a snug dish; in a wide one the liquid spreads thin and scorches, so choose a dish the six onions just fit.
- Ham or green pepperThe two are alternatives, not additions; ham is listed first. If using pepper alone the filling is bland, and it repays a little grated cheese or a heavier hand with the salt and pepper.
- YieldSix onions, one per person as a side dish, or two each as a light supper course.
Stuffed onions belong to a broad family of hollowed-and-filled vegetables — peppers, tomatoes, marrows, cabbage leaves — that fill the vegetable chapters of American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The appeal was economy as much as elegance: half a cup of chopped ham stretched across six servings, bound with the day-before's bread. The alternative of green pepper in place of ham offered a cheap way to put flavor and color into a meatless dish.