Glorious French Onion Soup

We have a cookbook titled "Glorious French Food" by James Peterson and it's one that I'd skimmed through but that we hadn't actually cooked out of yet, until yesterday. We decided that we should make one of the recipes because, really, what is the point of a cookbook if it's never used to cook?

I looked through it and found a recipe for French Onion Soup. We had recently stocked up on onions to make that very dish. So, perfect.

The recipe makes 10 first-course servings. The ingredients seem pretty basic:

5 pounds of onions -> sounds like a lot...but they reduce, so not totally unexpected

4 tablespoons butter -> if anything, seems to be skimping a bit, especially with so much onion

10 cups broth -> the introduction to the recipe says beef stock is best but that it really doesn't matter because it's going to taste like onions and cheese regardless

bouquet garni

salt

pepper

4 cups bread cubes . . .

What's left? Cheese.

25 cups of finely grated Swiss Gruyere or other full-flavored firm cheese (about five pounds)

Whoa! 25 cups? For ten people? That's half a pound per person! For a first course? And it specifically says not to use the "swiss" cheese with all the holes in it which is actually Emmentaler because it doesn't have enough flavor and makes the soup stringy.

But, hey, why not? So, we halved the recipe and bought enough good cheese for two servings (the rest of the soup we can eat with sliced swiss even if it is a bit stringy).

Here's a spoonful of it:

And here's a bowl:



If you've ever had French Onion Soup before and it didn't have ratios similar to these...you are missing out. It was amazing! Definitely only a first-course serving if you're only having one course. One bowl was plenty for a full meal.

French Onion Soup just got a lot more expensive for us to make...but it's so good.