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“Read in Italian” 🇮🇹 An onion soup quite different from the one we are used to imagining: no slice of toasted bread, no gratinated cheese, no finishing in the oven. Nero Wolfe’s version is a simple, slow-cooked dish, built around the flavour of beautifully browned onions, a good beef stock and a small glass of dry white vermouth.

Ingredients

Serves 6–8:

• about 1 kg onions, very thinly sliced
• 60 g butter
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1¼ teaspoons salt
• ½ teaspoon sugar
• 3 tablespoons flour
• about 2 litres well-flavoured beef stock
• 60 ml dry white vermouth
• salt and pepper

Method

Slice the onions very thinly.

Melt the butter with the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add the onions, cover and let them cook slowly.

After about 10 minutes, add the salt and sugar. Continue cooking over a low heat for about 25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onions are soft and evenly golden.

Add the flour, one tablespoon at a time, stirring carefully. Continue cooking for another 3–4 minutes.

Gradually pour in the hot beef stock, stirring after each addition so that it blends thoroughly with the onions.

Add the dry white vermouth and let the soup simmer for 45–50 minutes, with the lid slightly ajar. Stir occasionally during cooking and, if necessary, skim off any impurities that rise to the surface.

Taste, adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper, and serve the soup piping hot.

Onion Soup in Rex Stout’s Books

The soup makes an appearance as early as the first Nero Wolfe novel, Fer-de-Lance, published in 1934.

It is Archie Goodwin who tells us about its curious place in the detective’s life. Wolfe is prone to what Archie calls his “relapses”: periods when he refuses to work and becomes virtually impossible to reach.

When this happens, he can react in two completely opposite ways. In one, he retreats to bed and lives almost entirely on bread and onion soup. In the other, he effectively takes over the kitchen, directing Fritz in the preparation of an endless succession of dishes and indulging in true gastronomic marathons. Archie even recalls one such occasion when Wolfe managed to eat half a sheep, prepared in twenty different ways, over the course of two days.

The soup appears again in Death of a Doxy. This time it is Saul Panzer who narrowly misses a particularly tempting invitation: he arrives too late to join a meal featuring onion soup and Kentucky Burgoo.

In The Nero Wolfe Cookbook, the cookbook devoted to the cuisine of Wolfe’s brownstone on West 35th Street, the onion soup recipe is introduced with the very story of Wolfe’s “relapses” recounted by Archie in Fer-de-Lance.

And at the end of the recipe comes a warning that, knowing Nero Wolfe, it would probably be unwise to ignore.

No grated cheese. And no toasted French bread.

According to Wolfe, both would compromise the texture and flavour of this carefully balanced dish.

So, for once, forget the classic soupe à l’oignon topped with bread and melted cheese.

If you prepare it Nero Wolfe’s way, the soup comes to the table just as it is: piping hot, fragrant with onions, beef stock and vermouth. And perfectly balanced.