This episode is so very very simple it's an 1808 recipe for roasted
onions come along with us as we savor the flavors and the aromas of the 18th century.
This recipe is from a very very popular uh cookbook from the early 19th century it's
"The New System of Domestic Cookery" by Rundell it shows up in a lot of different places and
it's interesting because here in the early 19th century we can start to see a shift in cooking
and the idea that something as simple as this shows up into a cookbook
you know usually those 18th century cookbooks are a bit more fancy cooking this is simple home
cooking. Let me read to you this recipe it's so very very simple "roast onions should be done with
all their skins on they eat well alone with salt only or and cold butter or with roast potatoes
and with beet roots or with beetroots" so again they're just they're the directions are almost
there aren't any really she doesn't tell you what temperature to bake them uh so we're going to take
the idea of baked potatoes and say what happens if we want to bake an onion that's what we're
basically going to do here some of these recipes from the similar time period talking about doing
it in a dutch oven we're just going to do it in a standard oven today you could do it in earthen
oven that'd be really good we're just going to be using a standard large-ish medium yellow onion
because she doesn't tell us exactly which kind of onion we should use she's probably thinking you're
going to use whatever onion you have available to you no for real this is all we're going to do
uh she said make sure to bake these with the skins on so don't peel them we don't cut them we just we
just roast them we just bake them we could do it in a in a dutch oven but we're just going
to take these just like they are put them in our oven and again same kind of temperature and time
as you would a baked potato in the same size so maybe 30 minutes or 40 minutes at 350 you know
whatever you would do with a baked potato of a similar size so let's just put these in the oven.
There are our onions they've cooked up and they're cooled down just enough so they're not too hot to
handle again these cooks 35 minutes 40 minutes and I believe that what we'll do here is to extract
them from their uh from their shell I just want to cut the very bottom if I can get it to cut
it's so soft just cut the very bottom off there we go and now we can just squeeze it right out
of its shell and into our serving dish and just take that right out there and there is our onion
already and we can cut this add a little bit of salt so let me cut this.
Frankly this may have been the easiest recipe that we've ever done on this channel but I'm
very interested to see just how it turns out you know I enjoy baked potatoes and I enjoy onions
and I couldn't imagine a dish that was just this simple especially showing up in a cookbook from
almost the 18th century it's the early 19th century so let's find out here
um she says that you could eat it just just with salt and that's the only thing.
Let me tell you these are really really good all by themselves not um
not usually we have something you know onions like this maybe with a pot roast
that might bring in a bunch of other flavors but this is just the onion by itself and
with butter and salt it's amazingly good truly I can imagine
if you weren't well to do if you didn't if your larder wasn't full
if you didn't have any meat available to you you could have a very good meal on just
onions roasted amazing if you're interested in other historical recipes especially that that
emphasize the onions make sure to check out this wonderful Spanish recipe with fish and onions.