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Smothered Onions
Peel and cut in halves four good-sized white onions, slice very fine, then season with a half teaspoon salt and three saltspoons white pepper. Heat in a saucepan a tablespoon melted butter, add the onions, cover the pan with a plate, cook on the range for five minutes, then set in the oven for thirty-five minutes. Remove and use as required.
A plain braise of onions in their own moisture, meant as a base or garnish rather than a dish in itself. Two details in the original need translating: the saltspoon, and the oven temperature the author never bothered to give.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three of them is a generous 3/4 teaspoon of white pepper for four onions. That is assertive by current taste; half that is closer to what most cooks would want, especially if the onions are going into another dish.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, in the region of 350F, is a reasonable modern reading for a thirty-five minute covered braise; hotter and the onions risk colouring and drying at the edges before they collapse.
- The plate as a lidCovering with a plate rather than a fitted lid was common practice, and in effect it traps most of the steam while letting a little escape, so the onions soften without stewing in liquid. A lid set slightly ajar does the same thing.
- One tablespoon of butter is not muchFor four large onions this is barely a film. It works only because the onions release their own water within a minute or two. Keep the heat low for the initial five minutes on the range so nothing catches before the moisture comes out.
- Slicing"Cut in halves, slice very fine" gives thin half-moons; halving pole to pole is the easiest way to get them. Even thickness matters more than thinness here, since the pan is crowded and thicker slices will lag behind the thin ones.
- Pan choiceUse something oven-safe with a wide base -- a cast-iron or heavy stainless skillet or a shallow braiser. A tall narrow saucepan piles the onions too deep and they will steam unevenly.
- Yield and useFour good-sized onions cook down considerably, to something in the region of a cup or more. "Use as required" suggests a bed under steak or chops, a filling for omelettes, or stirring into gravies and sauces. They keep several days refrigerated.
"Smothering" is old kitchen shorthand for cooking something under a close cover in very little fat, so that it softens in its own steam rather than frying -- the same sense preserved in Southern American smothered chicken and smothered pork chops. It appears here as a working preparation rather than a finished dish: the phrase "use as required" suggests, though it does not prove, something a kitchen made in quantity and drew on all service, the way a modern restaurant keeps a container of soubise or onion compote on hand. The use of white onions and white pepper may reflect the period's fine-dining conventions, in which pale garnishes were kept free of visible dark specks; the white-pepper convention in bechamel and in cream soups runs throughout books of this era, though the motive behind this particular recipe is a matter of interpretation.