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Fried Onions (Peel and slice round-shaped)
Peel and slice round-shaped four medium-sized, sound white onions. Season with half teaspoon salt, detach them at the rings, gently roll them in two tablespoons flour, then plunge them in boiling fat and fry for eight minutes, or until they obtain a good golden colour. Lift them up with a skimmer, lay them on a cloth to dry and use as required.
A bare-bones method for flour-dusted fried onion rings, written for a cook who already knows what a kettle of hot fat looks like. Two details need attention: the fat temperature, which is never stated, and the frying time, which is long by modern practice.
- "Boiling fat" means 350-375FFat does not boil; the phrase is period shorthand for fat hot enough to bubble briskly around what is dropped into it. Use a thermometer and hold 350-375F, and fry in batches so the temperature does not crash.
- Eight minutes is too longAt a proper frying temperature, rings sliced about 1/4 inch thick colour in 2 to 4 minutes. Eight minutes suggests either much thicker slices or fat well below temperature; go by colour, not the clock, and pull them at deep gold since they darken on the drain.
- The flour will not stick to dry onionsThis is the hinge of the recipe. Salting the rings first draws out surface moisture, which is what the flour clings to, so let the salted rings sit a few minutes before flouring. Alternatively dip them in milk and lift straight into the flour.
- Round-shaped, sliced crosswise"Peel and slice round-shaped" means cut across the equator of the onion so the layers come apart as complete rings, not root-to-tip. "Sound" simply means firm and unblemished.
- Fat and vesselThe original names neither. Lard or beef drippings would have been the likely choices in a kitchen of this date, though the recipe does not say. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point works; allow at least 2 inches of depth so the rings float free.
- DrainingThe cloth the recipe calls for works, but the rings steam on the underside. A wire rack over a sheet pan keeps both sides crisp, and they should be salted again lightly the moment they come out.
- YieldFour medium onions should make a generous garnish for about four steaks or chops, or a side dish for two or three. They are best within minutes of frying and do not reheat well.
This is a garnish recipe rather than a dish in its own right, which is why it ends with the un-showy instruction "use as required" -- fried onions belonged on top of a steak, a calf's liver, or a plate of chops. It appears in Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906), the work of a chef long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and it carries a compressed, telegraphic style: no fat quantity, no pan size, no temperature, the sort of detail a cook of the period was expected to judge without being told. The flour dusting, rather than a batter, is the older and plainer treatment -- the thick beer-battered onion ring belongs to a later period -- and what is described here fries up closer to a crisp, lacy frizzle.