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Spanish Onion Salad
Soak some large Spanish onions for a few hours, changing the water several times, for the purpose of reducing their flavor. Slice the onions, put them in a salad bowl with a tablespoonful of chopped parsley, about a teacupful of vinegar and one-and one-half teacupfuls of salad oil; season with pepper and salt, toss the salad about to mix it, then serve with toasted crackers.
A raw onion salad from the Waldorf's kitchen, and about as simple as recipes get. Nearly everything worth saying concerns the soak and the sheer volume of dressing.
- The soak is the whole recipeSliced or whole, the onions must lose their harshness before dressing or the salad is inedible in quantity. Cold water, changed two or three times, does it in 30 to 60 minutes for sliced rings; a few hours as written is for whole peeled onions. Drain and pat dry, or the dressing will slide off.
- Spanish onionIn 1896 this meant a large, pale, mild onion, largely imported, and valued for eating raw. A modern Spanish onion is the closest match, and a sweet onion (Vidalia, Walla Walla) will serve; a standard cooking yellow onion is sharper and needs the longer soak.
- A teacupfulReckoned at somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 cup; taking it at 3/4 cup gives about 3/4 cup vinegar to about 1 1/8 cups oil. Note that this is dressing for a serving bowl, not a coating for the onions -- the slices are meant to sit in it. Expect to leave most of it behind in the bowl, or scale it down by half.
- The vinegar ratioAt about 1 part vinegar to 1 1/2 parts oil this is far sharper than the modern 1:3 vinaigrette, which may suit sweet raw onion. If it reads as aggressive, add oil rather than reducing the vinegar.
- Cut thinThe recipe says only "slice." Thin -- about 1/8 inch -- on a mandoline or a sharp knife, broken into rings, gives a salad you can eat with a fork rather than a stack of onion slabs.
- RestingTwenty to thirty minutes in the dressing softens the rings and rounds off any remaining bite. Longer than an hour and they go limp and the parsley turns drab.
- Toasted crackersThin, plain water crackers or unsalted soda crackers, toasted dry until crisp and just coloured (about 350F is a modern working suggestion; the recipe gives no method). They are the point of contrast; do not substitute anything sweet or seeded.
- YieldTwo large onions serve four to six as a side salad or a cheese-course relish; the recipe itself gives no quantity.
Oscar Tschirky was never formally the Waldorf's chef -- he was its maitre d'hotel -- but his 1896 Cook Book collected the hotel's working repertoire, and this is a good example of the plain end of it. Large mild onions marketed as "Spanish" were imported into nineteenth-century America and were valued for eating raw, and oil-and-vinegar salads of them turn up in period cookbooks. Soaking in frequently changed water was a familiar period trick for taming pungent vegetables.