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Creamed Onions
Peel the onions, and boil for one hour in plenty of salted water. Drain well and cut each onion into four, six or any desired number of pieces, over which pour a cream sauce.
A two-line recipe that assumes you already know how to make a cream sauce and how big an onion is. Both assumptions need filling in.
- The hour is too long for most onionsMedium yellow or white onions of about 2 to 2 1/2 inches are tender in 20 to 30 minutes of simmering; an hour leaves them collapsing into water. The full hour would suit only very large onions, or whole pearl onions boiled in their skins.
- Boil them whole, cut them afterThis is the point of the method. Cutting first floods the layers with water and the pieces fall apart; a whole onion holds its shape and the quarters stay in neat wedges when the sauce goes on.
- Salted water, generously"Plenty of salted water" means a large pot; a gentler boil knocks the onions about less. Roughly a tablespoon of salt per 4 quarts. Trim the root end but leave it attached until after cooking so the layers stay anchored.
- The cream sauce implied hereA cream sauce of this period is a white roux sauce, on the order of 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 cup milk or thin cream, and salt. Make it while the onions cook and keep it thin enough to pour.
- Drain well, and mean itBoiled onions hold a surprising amount of water between the layers. Let them sit in the colander several minutes, or return them briefly to the dry hot pot, or the sauce will thin and separate on the plate.
- YieldSix medium onions, about 2 lb, with a cup of sauce serves four to six as a side dish.
Creamed onions belong to the long American tradition of boiled vegetables finished in white sauce, the plain end of the French " their status as a holiday side dish is often said to date from the early twentieth century. The Butterick Cook Book (1911) came from the pattern company's publishing arm, aimed at the same middle-class housekeeper who bought its dress patterns and Delineator magazine, and its brevity here is characteristic: cream sauce was treated as a foundation the cook had already learned, so vegetable entries need only say "pour a cream sauce" and stop.