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Stuffed Onions
(Cipolle ripiene) Boil six large onions for an hour. Then drain and skin. Remove the heart with the point of a knife. In the place of the heart place the stuffing made with 1/4 lb. of ham or tongue, chopped and mixed with bread crumbs ground, two tablespoonfuls of milk, two pinches of salt and one of pepper. When the onions are prepared and stuffed place them in a saucepan whose bottom has been greased with butter, sprinkle with bread crumbs ground and place in the oven, not too hot. At the time of serving add some white sauce or balsamella (No 54). Stuffed onions are served as vegetables, or side-dish with roast-beef boiled-beef. 160
A straightforward baked stuffed onion, but the original assumes a few conventions worth spelling out.
- Boil less, or expect collapseA full hour of boiling leaves large onions barely able to hold a filling. Twenty to thirty minutes in salted water, until a knife meets slight resistance at the centre, gives shells firm enough to hollow and stuff. Cutting off the top and leaving the root end intact helps them keep their shape.
- "Not too hot" ovenRead this as 325-350F. The onions are already cooked through; the oven is only there to heat the stuffing and colour the crumbs, which takes 20-30 minutes.
- BalsamellaNo. 54 in the book is its balsamella, the Italian besciamella, i.e. bechamel: butter and flour cooked to a blond roux, then milk whisked in and simmered until it coats a spoon. Make it while the onions bake and spoon it over at the table, as directed, rather than baking the onions under it.
- Ham or tongueBoth are meant to be already cooked and well salted, so the filling needs no further cooking on its own. Prosciutto cotto, a thick slice of boiled ham, or cooked beef tongue all work; a dry-cured prosciutto will make it noticeably saltier, so ease off the added salt.
- "Bread crumbs ground"Fine dry crumbs, not the soft fresh sort. In the stuffing they bind, and two tablespoons of milk is roughly what a quarter pound of chopped meat plus a handful of crumbs will take before it turns pasty; add the milk gradually.
- Don't waste the heartsThe removed centres are the best-flavoured part. Chop them and work them into the stuffing.
- The saucepanA shallow ovenproof pan or gratin dish, buttered. Here 'saucepan' followed by 'place in the oven' implies a metal pan that goes from stove to oven, not a lidded casserole in the modern sense.
- YieldSix onions. The closing line offers them as a vegetable or side dish with roast or boiled beef; a serving count is not given, so reckon one onion a head.
Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) was written for American households, and it appears to draw on the Italian domestic tradition codified by Pellegrino Artusi a generation earlier -- the cross-references to numbered sauces such as balsamella point that way. Cipolle ripiene belongs to the broad family of Italian stuffed vegetables, in which a hollowed onion, tomato, courgette or pepper carries a small quantity of cured meat, breadcrumbs and dairy far further than it would go on its own; the stuffing here stretches a quarter pound of ham across six onions. Pairing the dish with roast or boiled beef, rather than treating it as the contorno or standalone course it would be at an Italian table, suits an American readership. Béchamel's Italian name, besciamella, is generally traced to the French court sauce, though Italian cooks had long used similar milk-and-flour binders.