Onions
Baked onions make a pleasant change in the daily menu. Bake them in the skins. Select onions of uniform size; brush them and wipe them very clean, but do not wash. Bake as you would a potato, simply placing them in the oven and letting them cook until tender. When done, peel them, cut them and serve with melted butter, seasoned with pepper and salt. Another way is to peel large ones and boil one hour in plenty of water slightly salted. Butter a shallow dish and arrange the onions in. Sprinkle with pepper and salt and put a teaspoonful of butter in the center of each onion. Cover lightly with crumbs. Bake slowly for one hour. Serve with a cream or butter sauce.
Two methods in one entry: onions baked whole in their skins, and onions parboiled then finished under crumbs. Both are sound, though the times reflect an era of larger, coarser storage onions.
- Oven heat for the baked versionThe book gives no temperature; "Bake as you would a potato" probably implies a moderately hot oven, in modern terms somewhere around 375-400F. Expect roughly an hour for medium onions and longer for large ones; they are done when a skewer slides through the centre without resistance.
- "Bake slowly" for the second methodUndefined in the book, but a low-moderate oven, perhaps 300-325F, fits. Since the onions have already been boiled tender, much of the hour goes on drying and browning the crumbs.
- The boiling time is too longThe boiling time is long by modern standards -- onions widely sold today are often milder and softer than older storage stock, so 20 to 30 minutes to just-tender may be enough, or they risk collapsing into strings before the crumb topping goes on.
- Do not wash the baking onionsThis is the hinge of the first method. Wet skins steam rather than roast and the onion turns watery; brushing and wiping keeps the papery layers dry so they act as a sealed jacket.
- Uniform size matters more than in most recipesWhole onions cook from the outside in, and a mixed tray gives you scorched small ones alongside raw centres. Sort by diameter, not by weight.
- CrumbsPeriod crumbs were dried stale bread grated fine, closer to modern fine dry breadcrumbs than to panko. Toss them with a little melted butter before scattering, or the top layer stays pale and floury.
- Cream saucePresumably a plain white sauce: roughly 1 tbsp butter, 1 tbsp flour and 1 cup milk or cream, cooked out and seasoned. Salt it lightly, since in this method the onions have already been salted twice.
- YieldFigure one large or two medium onions per person as a side dish. Note that the recipe directs peeling and cutting the baked onions before serving, rather than opening them at table.
Onions were among the cheapest and longest-keeping vegetables in an American winter larder, which may be why the compiler bothers to suggest them as "a pleasant change in the daily menu" and to offer something beyond plain boiling. Baking in the skin is an old and frugal technique, the same logic as a jacket potato: no pot, no water to carry, no fuel spent bringing it to the boil, and the vegetable's own moisture does the cooking. The second method, parboil then bake under buttered crumbs with a white sauce, is a common American vegetable treatment of the period, applied to celery, cauliflower and salsify as well as onions.