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Onions-Boiled
Select those of uniform size; remove the outer skin, then boil until tender in a large quantity of milk and water; the flavour will be more delicate. Drain them when tender, and season with butter, salt, and pepper.
A plain nineteenth-century side dish whose only trick is the cooking liquid: milk thinned with water tempers the sulphur compounds that make boiled onions harsh. The recipe gives no quantities, so the proportions are yours to set.
- The milk-and-water ratioThe recipe sets no proportions; roughly half milk, half water is one workable choice. Enough to cover the onions by an inch is sufficient; the flavour benefit comes from the milk being present, not from drowning them.
- Watch for scorchingMilk catches on the bottom of a pan far more readily than water. Use a heavy pot, keep the heat at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil, and stir the base once or twice.
- Which onionsUniform size matters because unequal onions cook unequally. Small boiling onions or peeled shallots, 1 to 1.5 inches across, take 20 to 30 minutes; medium yellow onions want 35 to 45. Test with a skewer at the centre.
- Trim, don't gougeTake off the papery skin and shave the root end without cutting into it. A root plate left intact holds the layers together so the onion arrives whole rather than as a heap of rings.
- DrainingDrain well and let them sit a minute in the colander. Boiled onions hold a surprising amount of liquid between the layers, and butter will not cling to a wet onion.
- SeasoningAbout 1 tablespoon butter per pound, with salt and white or black pepper, as the recipe directs. A grating of nutmeg is a period-plausible addition, though this recipe does not call for it.
- YieldTwo pounds of onions serves four to six as a side. Boiled onions were commonly served alongside roast meats.
- If you want a sauceSome of the cooking milk can be reserved and thickened with a butter-and-flour roux to make a cream sauce, along the lines of the dishes that appear as "creamed onions" in later books.
Boiled onions were a fixture of the American and British table through the whole nineteenth century, appearing on Thanksgiving and Christmas menus alongside the roast so often that cookbooks frequently seem to have felt little need to explain them. The milk-and-water trick is old and widespread, and it works because dairy proteins and fat bind some of the pungent sulphur compounds released when onion tissue is cut and heated. The Home Cook Book, compiled in Chicago in the 1870s from contributions by named local women, is a fundraising community cookbook; the terseness here is characteristic of the genre, where contributors assumed a reader who already knew how to boil a vegetable and needed only the one detail that made it better.