French Onion Soup

I found out some time ago that my daughter-in-law really likes French Onion Soup. I've observed her ordering it on more than one occasion at a family favorite neighborhood restaurant.  

On the Christmas following the birth of my intensely cute and highly communicative granddaughter, my daughter-in-law gave me a set of Le Creuset earthenware French Onion Soup crocks.  Being a new mother no doubt leaves little time for multi-step preparation recipes and my granddaughter understandably isn't quite restaurant-ready yet.

So, I can take a hint. 

I tried my hand at a recipe last night for a Valentine's family dinner which apparently was well received.

French Onion Soup has humble beginnings as far back as Roman times because onions were both inexpensive and easy to cultivate. Onions would be sliced and cooked with wine, seasonings and perhaps some broth made from bones and scraps. The dish was generally considered peasant food by the Roman aristocracy. How ironic then, that in modern times, French Onion Soup was a delicacy served at the Palace of Versailles during the reign of King Louis XV.  

Food historians tells us that French Onion Soup had been brought to Versailles by King Louis' father-in-law, the Duke of Lorraine.  He allegedly discovered it in the town of Châlons-en-Champagne at a restaurant called La Pomme d’Or (The Golden Apple).  The soup was the creation of the restaurant's chef, Nicolas Appert, who would later become famous as the father of food preservation and the inventor of canning.  

Apparently, the Duke, whose name was Stanislas Leszczynski, was so enamored with the soup that he spent considerable time in Appert's kitchen learning the exact techniques and ingredients for preparing the dish, which he then took with him to the royal French Court. When Appert years later published his cookbook in 1831, he actually named the dish after the Duke, Soupe à l'oignon à la Stanislas.

With the recipe in the public domain, it survived the French Revolution, but any mention of royalty in its name would have been politically incorrect for its time, and so it was re-named, simply, Onion Soup.  They don't call it French Onion Soup in France.

Fast forward to 1857 in New York City, when Henri Mouquin opened the Mouquin Restaurant & Wine Company, where he is credited with bringing both French Onion Soup and Bouillabaisse to the United States.  French Onion Soup was standard menu fare there even after his death when his son operated the restaurant until 1925, after which it was closed for Prohibition violations. Meanwhile in France where there was no Prohibition, people came to realize that the soup was a great way to mask the smell of alcohol and it was commonly referred to as la soupe des ivrognes, or "the soup of drunkards." 

Today, the soup once more has risen to its loftier social reputation as a tradition at French weddings where friends and family will join the bride and groom on their wedding night to eat onion soup from a special tureen. While no longer disdainfully called the soup of drunkards, it is generally considered in France to be an honorable hangover cure. Paris cafes jostle positions for bragging rights as to who has the best Onion Soup, with La Jacobine outside the Latin Quarter generally considered the current title holder. They allegedly use a 1961 recipe that was printed in Larousse Gastronomique, considered to be the quintessential encyclopedia of French cuisine first published in 1938.

After much research, I decided to trust Julia Child's recipe for French Onion Soup as broadcast on her 97th show of The French Chef which aired on PBS in November, 1965.  This show was actually a re-tread of one of three pilots made for the series in July, 1962 and then re-broadcast as part of the show's first season in February, 1963.  I think her version of French Onion Soup is better than the Larousse recipe but I still have made a couple of small alterations.  

Julia used 1/2 teaspoon of sugar in her recipe.  I've read that today's onions are generally sweeter than they were 60 years ago, but as a hedge, I am using one sweet onion, a Texas-1015, to ensure a good caramelization of the onion base, essential to the success of the dish.  Another famous sweet onion, the Vidalia, was not exported from Georgia until the 1970s and the Texas-1015 sweet onion didn't exist until 1983.  If Julia had either of these options available to her in 1962, I'm sure she would have used them instead of table sugar.

Additionally, Julia's original recipe called for Swiss cheese but she wasn't specific about the type.  Today, almost all French Onion Soup recipes call for Gruyere Cheese, which is technically Swiss, but not what television audiences of the 1960s would have considered Swiss cheese.  I actually used a blend of Gruyere and Swiss cheese, marketed as "Alpine Blend" under the brand Private Selection, which is proprietary to the Kroger grocery chain.

Finally, I found that a few tablespoons of Kitchen Bouquet, not in Julia's recipe, added a bit of dept and color to the broth. 

Beyond those minor edits, this is Julia's take on a simple soup with a history that is both famous and infamous.

Ingredients
5 medium to large yellow onions
1 medium to large sweet onion (like, Vidalia or Texas-1015)
4 tbsp olive oil
1 baguette of French bread (you can substitute sourdough)
3 tbsp fine cognac or brandy
8 cups beef stock (like, Kitchen Basics)
2 cups shredded mixed Gruyere and Swiss Cheese (like, Private Selection Alpine Blend)
1 cup dry white wine
3 tbsp olive oil, plus more for drizzling
6 tbsp butter, plus more for drizzling
3 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp ground sage
1 bay leaf
4 tbsp Kitchen Bouquet
salt & pepper to taste

The Recipe
Peel the onions and remove the crowns and roots. Julia used a mandolin to slice the onions very thinly, but I found this too tedious and preferred hand-cutting the onions into very thin rings with a sharp chef's knife. 

Heat a large oven-proof stock pot or a Dutch oven that has a tight-fitting lid over medium heat, adding both the olive oil and the butter once the pot is hot. Stir in the onions, ensuring they are evenly coated in the oil. Cover the pot and cook the onions for twenty minutes. Check occasionally and stir to ensure they aren't burning. The onions should be translucent and very tender at this point.

Pre-heat the oven to 300 degrees.

Remove the lid, turn up the heat to medium high and continue cooking the onions for another twenty to thirty minutes until they are thoroughly browned and caramelized. Stir frequently, scrapping up the brown bits that may form in the bottom of the pot as you go.

Reduce the heat to medium, add more butter if necessary and scoot the onions to one side of the pot. Stir the flour into the butter at the bottom of the pot until a roux is formed.  Allow the roux to bubble and brown a bit, then add one cup of the beef stock. Stir continuously for a couple of minutes to incorporate the roux thoroughly into the liquid, then add the rest of the stock, wine, Kitchen Bouquet, sage and the bay leaf.  Give it all a good stir to combine, then bring to a strong simmer.  Put the lid on the pot and the pot in the oven for 2-3 hours.

In the meantime, slice the French or sourdough bread into 3/4" thick slices with a circumference that will fit the top of your soup crocks.  In my case, I was able to fit two baguette slices into each soup crock.  Drizzle both sides of the bread with olive oil and place them on a baking sheet.  Set aside until the soup has finished cooking.

When the cooking time has elapsed, remove the soup from the oven and lift the temperature to 400 degrees.  Taste the soup, and add salt and pepper as needed, then remove the bay leaf and add the cognac.

Put the bread slices in the oven and toast them for about five minutes.

Ladle the soup into French Onion Soup Crocks, leaving room for the bread and cheese.  Cover the soup with the toasted bread slice(s) and add 1/4 cup of the Gruyere and Swiss Cheese on top of the bread.  Drizzle a little melted butter over the cheese.  Place the crocks on a sheet pan and bake in the 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes minutes until the cheese is melted and bubbly.

This recipe will make four soup crocks of French Onion Soup, but you will have plenty of the soup and bread left over to make more soup crocks several times over. It will keep well refrigerated for several days and freezes well for up to six months.