No. 2765

Onions Braised

Oignons Braises

Peel eighteen onions, weighing an ounce and a half each, being careful not to break them; cut off the stalks and roots and make a crosswise incision on the root end; saute them in butter or fat with salt and a pinch of sugar, browning slightly; then range them in a sautoir with bards of fat pork; moisten with a little veal blond stock (No. 423), just sufficient to cover, and cook slowly while reducing the liquid. Dress in a vegetable dish and pour the stock over, or else cover with matelote sauce (No. 498), having reduced it with the stock.

← No. 2764 Onions Boiled, Hollandaise or Soubise Sauce Celery, Onions & Leeks No. 2766 Onions, White or Bermuda—Stuffed →

For the Modern Kitchen

A straightforward glazed braise from Ranhofer's kitchen, written for cooks who already knew what a sautoir and a bard were. A few of the terms and quantities need translating.

The cross-cut at the rootScoring an X in the root end helps the inner layers expand at roughly the same rate as the outer ones, so the onions are less likely to telescope apart or burst. About a quarter inch deep is enough.
Onion sizeAn ounce and a half each means small onions roughly 1.5 inches across — modern boiling onions or large pearl onions, not cipollini unless they are on the small side. Eighteen of them comes to about 1.7 lb.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan wide enough to hold the onions in a single layer. Crowding them into two layers means the ones on top steam while the bottom ones scorch in the reducing stock.
Bards of fat porkThin sheets of fatback laid over the food to baste it. Salt pork sliced thin and blanched a minute in boiling water is the closest substitute; thick-cut unsmoked bacon works but adds a cure flavor Ranhofer did not intend.
Veal blond stockHis No. 423 is a pale veal stock. A light unsalted veal or chicken stock stands in. It needs to be unsalted or lightly salted, since the whole point is to reduce it down onto the onions.
The pinch of sugarNot for sweetness — it accelerates browning in the initial sauté so the onions take color before they soften. Keep the heat moderate; sugar in butter goes from amber to bitter quickly.
Time and heat"Cook slowly while reducing the liquid" will take roughly 40 to 50 minutes, covered loosely, at a bare simmer; the recipe gives no oven and no temperature. The onions are done when a knife tip meets no resistance and the stock has drawn down to a syrupy glaze.
Matelote sauceHis No. 498 is a red wine sauce built on fish stock with mushrooms and small onions — a sharp, dark finish more at home beside fish than beside a roast. The plainer option, the reduced braising stock poured over, suits most modern menus better.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially his working file: some 3,500 numbered recipes cross-referenced to one another, so that a line like "moisten with veal blond stock (No. 423)" assumes a brigade with that stock already on the range. Braised onions of this kind belong to the French repertoire of glazed garnish vegetables — cooked in a small quantity of stock that reduces to coat them rather than being drained away — a technique the nineteenth-century restaurant kitchen applied equally to carrots, turnips and chestnuts. The bards of fat pork, laid over the top, melted slowly and self-basted the onions in a covered pan. The recipe also offers matelote sauce, a red-wine fish sauce, as an alternative finish.