Onions - Still making grown Chefs cry...

There are few ingredients as humbly useful as the onion. It appears in every kitchen, at every stage of unprompted regrowth and under every list of ingredients. Raw and sharp in summer salads, melted and brown in winter stews, or quietly working in the background of rich sauces, often without due credit. The French don’t just cook with onions — they have built the entirety of French cuisine around them.

France grows more onions than any other country in Europe, and you can taste the map in every bulb...

In the north, the big yellow oignons paille of Picardy anchor soups and casseroles. In Brittany way farther east, the pink-skinned rosés de Roscoff carry the sea in their surprising sweetness, originally ferried by Breton “Onion Johnnies” who traveled across the Channel to sell them door-to-door in southern England. In the dry garigues of Provence, the flatter, milder oignons doux des Cévennes and de Trébons thrive on terraced hillsides, their sugar content so high they caramelise almost out of duty. And then there’s the Franco-German borderlands, where pearl-white onions and Riesling wine meet in the tarte flambée — proof that a humble onion can hold its liqour like the Toulouse rugby team.

Botanically speaking, onions belong to the Allium family, alongside garlic, shallots, leeks, and chives - the French holy order of flavour. Each variety owes its temperament to its sulphur compounds: cut one, and enzymes create invisible oxides, the tear-up gas that makes the cook look like they have spent the moring wathcing Kramer vs Kramer.

Culinarily, onions offer one of France's simplest alchemies: "Whatever + cooked in butter + patience = deliciousness". It’s the basis of the French pantry — mirepoix, sofrito, fond de cuisson. Every regional dish begins with that quiet sizzle. Onions are first in. The paratoopers have left the pantry.

Historically, onions were the working man’s food — cheap, storable, honest. They flavoured army rations and the soups of Kings alike. Elevated by their constancy, the soupe à l’oignon of Les Halles in Paris, once a cure for the hangovers of market workers, is now served under chandeliers, topped with a doorstep of grilled cheese. Even Auguste Escoffier, the rotund maestro of haute cuisine, called the onion “the finest friend of flavour.”

And still, despite centuries of gastronomic graft, the onion has a sense of irony. However pleasing your dish, it still makes you cry. Cook it too quickly, it becomes as bitter as America. Ignore it, and your stew will taste of a bad camping holiday. France’s loyalty to the onion is not culinary nostalgia — it’s practical romance. The French know that almost every great dish begins in tears and ends in comfort.

Even the famous soup. Everywhere else I have ever eaten it, it’s French Onion Soup — rich, rustic, and proudly continental. But here in France, it’s just soupe à l’oignon, no bells, few whistles.

It reminds me of how French fries become frites the moment you cross the border, except they are weirdly just better; how English muffins in London are just… well… muffins. It’s proof that context — not content — gives names to things.

In the Dordogne, onion soup isn’t a restaurant performance; it’s the food of every day. It maybe the kissing cousin of the glossy versions of Paris, but here, farmers supped it after a long days toil, not for applause but for comfort. It’s humble, forgiving, and quietly transformational.

Below is Platform 13's "kissing cousin" of the glossy Parisian version. It should be mentioned here, that some villages in our region make this using only garlic... which would certainly stop your cousins from kissing.

recipe | tourin de dordogne (tourin blanchi)

serves 4–6 hungry farmers | time: ~35 minutes (longer if you are watching Kramer vs Kramer)

• 2 tbsp duck fat (or goose fat / olive oil)

• 2 large onions, finely sliced (or 3 medium)

• 6–10 garlic cloves, sliced (half fine, half chunkier)

• 2 tbsp plain flour

• 1.2 L water or light chicken stock

• salt & black pepper

• 2 eggs, separated

• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar (to bind the egg yolks)

• 4–6 slices French-style bread, toasted

• Parsley to throw at it before serving

1. melt & soften. warm duck fat in a heavy pot over low heat. add onion and garlic; cook gently 6–8 min without colouring. you want soft and fragrant, not brown.

2. roux. sprinkle in flour; stir 1–2 min to cook it out (still low heat).

3. liquid. whisk in water/stock a little at a time to avoid lumps. season generously. bring to a bare simmer 10–12 min.

4. egg whites. whisk whites lightly. with the soup just simmering, drizzle whites while stirring the surface to create delicate threads (stop stirring sooner if you like bigger wisps).

5. yolk liaison. whisk yolks with vinegar. take the pot off the heat; ladle in some hot soup to temper, then return the mixture to the pot, stirring to thicken/brighten) without boiling. adjust salt/pepper.

6. serve. put toasted bread in warm bowls; ladle the hot tourin over. add parsley, et voilà.