Boiled Onions
When peeling onions, keep them under water to avoid weeping of eyes. Cook in boiling water, then drain, add more boiling water and boil again; change the water once more and cook until tender. This renders them mild in flavor. When the last water is poured off, add a cupful of milk or cream, and seasoning of butter, white pepper and salt. Boil up and serve.
A three-water boil, which is the whole point of the recipe: each change of water carries off more of the sulphur compounds, leaving the onions sweet rather than sharp. The method still works, though it costs you texture and most of the onion flavour.
- The hinge: change the water while it is boilingDrain and refill with water already at a rolling boil, not cold water, or the onions sit in a slack simmer and turn woolly. Three waters in all, as written; two is enough for a mild modern onion.
- Onion choice has changedStorage onions of the period were generally more pungent than the yellow onions sold today, and modern sweet varieties milder still. Small white boiling onions or peeled pearl onions suit the dish best; a large Spanish or sweet onion needs only one water.
- TimingNo time is given. Small whole onions of about 1½ inches take 20-30 minutes total across the changes; test with a skewer, which should meet no resistance at the centre. Overcooked onions collapse into slime, so pull them the moment they yield.
- The milk finish"Boil up" in milk or cream will curdle if the milk is boiled hard or if any acid is present. Bring it just to a bare simmer, or use cream, which is far more stable than whole milk.
- White pepper is deliberateMost likely to keep the dish visually clean, in a period that prized white sauces and white vegetables. Black pepper will do, though it tastes slightly different and speckles the surface.
- Quantities and yieldNo weight of onions or yield is given. A cupful of milk would suit something in the region of 2 lb of onions, four to six as a side. Butter is unmeasured; 2 tablespoons is about right.
- Peeling under waterThe advice is sound and works because the volatile sulphur compounds dissolve rather than reach your eyes. Chilling the onions first does much the same and is less awkward.
- Filed oddlyThe recipe sits in the Game section rather than among the vegetables; the book gives no reason for the placement.
Boiled onions in milk or cream belong to the plain English-American vegetable tradition that dominated nineteenth-century household cookery: a vegetable was boiled, drained, and finished with butter, cream or a white sauce. The repeated changes of water reflect a period taste that treated strong onion flavour as something to be tamed rather than built on, and it also reflects the onions available — thick-skinned keepers pulled in autumn and stored through winter, which grow sharper and more sulphurous the longer they sit. The dish may well appear here among the game recipes because a dish of mild creamed onions was often said to accompany roast wildfowl and venison, alongside currant jelly and bread sauce.