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Onion Soup, with Cheese
(Italy.) This is a favorite soup at the French and Italian restaurants in New York. It is the "plat de jour" for Mondays. Slice four large onions very thin, fry them in butter, and add them to 1 quart of well-flavored beef consomme. Put these in an earthen pipkin or marmite, and arrange on top four slices of toasted bread, on which sprinkle 2 tablespoonfuls of grated Parmesan cheese. Keep these hot, and serve in the dish, one slice of toast for each person. Small yellow bowls, such as are used for custards, etc., are generally passed with the soup, instead of ordinary soup plates. The foreign flavor depends greatly upon such trifles, imitating the inns of the old country.
A straightforward gratinée in all but name, and the instructions leave two things unsaid: how long the onions should cook, and whether the assembled soup goes near heat. Both matter more than anything else here.
- Fry the onions properlyThe recipe gives no time or heat, saying only "fry them in butter." For a sweet rather than sharp soup, cook the slices slowly over medium-low heat until well coloured and greatly reduced; 30 to 45 minutes is a reasonable modern reading, though the original may have intended something quicker and paler.
- Pipkin and marmiteA pipkin is a small earthenware pot with a handle; a marmite is a straight-sided earthen or metal stockpot. Any lidded ovenproof casserole or individual onion-soup crocks will do.
- Consommé"Well-flavored beef consommé" means a clarified beef stock of good strength, richer than most tinned broth. Use a good homemade beef stock, or reduce a low-sodium purchased stock somewhat before salting.
- Keep hot, not gratinéedThe recipe only says to keep the assembled dish hot, so the cheese softens rather than browning. For the familiar crust, run the filled crocks under a broiler for 2 to 3 minutes until the Parmesan blisters.
- ToastUse a dense, chewy bread cut thickly and dried out well in the oven. Soft sandwich bread quickly falls apart in the broth.
- Cheese quantityTwo tablespoons of grated Parmesan across four slices is sparing by modern taste; three to four tablespoons per slice would give the fuller cheese layer familiar today.
- YieldOne quart with four slices of toast serves four as a first course, two as a light supper.
Onion soup thickened with bread and cheese is one of the oldest surviving French uses for cheap ingredients — onions, stale loaf, stock — and it is traditionally associated with the market porters and late-night eating houses of Paris, where it is often said to have been eaten toward dawn. What is interesting is that this book, written for American readers wanting a taste of Europe, files it under Italy: the Parmesan and the earthenware pipkin place it in the Italian restaurants then multiplying in New York, and the recipe records the custom of a "plat de jour for Mondays." The closing note about small yellow bowls is a period tell — atmosphere as an ingredient, and a reminder that readers were being sold a foreign dining experience as much as a foreign dish.