This section is from the book "Common Sense In The Household. A Manual Of Practical Housewifery", by Marion Harland. Also available from Amazon: Common Sense in the Household.
Cut off tops and tails, and skin them. Lay in cold water half an hour, then put into a saucepan with enough boiling water to cover them. Cook fifteen minutes and drain off the water, re-covering them with more from the boiling tea-kettle. Boil until a straw will pierce them; drain and put into a dish with pepper, salt, and plenty of butter. Send around drawn butter with them. Never cook onions in an iron pot.
Young onions should always be cooked in this way. Top, tail, and skin them, lay them in cold water half an hour or more, then put into a saucepan with hot water enough to cover them. When half done, throw off all the water, except a small teacupful - less, if your mess be small; add a like quantity of milk, a great spoonful of butter, with pepper and salt to taste. Stew gently until tender, and turn into a deep dish.
If the onions are strong and large, boil in three waters, throwing away all of the first and second, and reserving a very little of the third to mix with the milk.
It ought to be more generally known that the disagreeable odor left by any of the onion family upon the breath may be removed by chewing and swallowing a few grains of roasted coffee. No more nutritious vegetable ever finds its way to our tables, and it is greatly to be regretted that the unpleasant result just named should deter so many from eating it. It is especially beneficial to brain-workers and nervous invalids - the very people who are least likely to taste it.
The large Spanish or Bermuda onions are the only kinds which are usually baked. Wash clean, but do not remove the skins. Boil an hour - the water should be boiling when they are put in, and slightly salt. Change it twice during this time, always replenishing with more, boiling-hot. Turn off the water, take the onions out and lay upon a cloth, that all the moisture may be absorbed or evaporate. Roll each in a round piece of buttered tissue-paper, twisting it at the top to keep it closed, and bake in a slow oven nearly an hour. When tender all through, peel them, put them into a deep dish, and brown slightly, basting with butter freely. This will take perhaps a quarter of an hour more. Serve in a vegetable dish, and pour the melted butter over them when you have sprinkled with pepper and salt.
Wash and skin very large Bermuda onions. Lay in cold water an hour. Parboil in boiling water half an hour. Drain, and while hot extract the hearts, taking care not to break the outer layers. Chop the inside thus obtained very fine, with a little cold fat pork or bacon. Add bread-crumbs, pepper, salt, mace, and wet with a spoonful or two of cream. Bind with a well-beaten eggt and work into a smooth paste. Stuff the onions with this; put into a dripping-pan with a very little hot water, and simmer in the oven for an hour, basting often with melted butter. When done, take the onions up carefully, and arrange the open ends uppermost in a vegetable dish. Add to the gravy in the dripping-pan the juice of half a lemon, four tablespoonfuls of cream or milk, and a little browned flour wet with cold milk. Boil up once, and pour over the onions.
 
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