First recipe for my New Year’s resolution is Onion Soup, Paris Style from the cookbook French Cuisine for All by Louisette Bertholle (who also co-authored Mastering the Art of French Cooking with Julia Child). The book was gifted to me nearly 30 years ago by a friend of the family.
Love the intro: “A friend of mine who lives mostly at night maintains that onion soup is easy to digest and takes the place of sleep!” Nice little tip for you night owls out there lol
The asterisk next to the Beef Bouillon indicates that you’re supposed to go back a few pages to the recipe for Beef Bouillon and make that first, which I. Did Not. I also misread the amounts, so I only bought two quarts of beef stock instead of three and had to make up the difference with chicken stock.
The soup ends up quite bland, so I also added about a tablespoon of marmite, a quarter cup of sherry (which was the closest alcohol to wine that I had on hand) and a couple of tablespoons of vinegar (a mixture of red wine and balsamic). That bit of acid really helped.
The one other thing I changed was that I used mozarella on the bread, because I don’t particularly like swiss.
At first glance this looks like French onion soup, but you don’t cook the onions anywhere near as much as I would expect. You’re supposed to add the broth when they’ve barely started to take colour – ten minutes according to the recipe, but it took me about 25 to get to that point. I imagine this is part of the reason it comes out bland. You get a lot more flavour out of the onions when they’re darker. I probably won’t make this specific recipe again, but I would try making modern French onion soup at some point.
For future reference, I’m planning on tagging my new year’s resolution recipes with “new year new food”.
