So the first question is "why is it white". Or rather, "why isn't it brown". After a little cookbook-riffling from Hwsgo, the answer was clear: french onion soup is, as we suspected, brown because the onions are caramelised in a little sugar.For a while, when I was working regularly in France, I searched hypermarches and small shops alike for a white French soup, possibly garlic, that my father had eaten there and wanted more of if he could get it. I think, on tasting, that this may be the soup in question. Despite the fact that I had, in a slightly wine-enhanced state, halved every quantity in the recipe except the white wine vinegar, this soup had a delicacy that seemed divorced from its origins as a pile of onions, a tub of chicken stock and some ordinary butter. Most of the time, the ingredients of said soup sat around doing their stuff (sweating, simmering, resting) during dinner: the only really active part of the recipe involved squishing them through a large sieve to remove the (now-exhausted) pieces of onion. And that, apart from a little discussion over just how high a heat a soup should be simmering on (Hwsgo seems to be amongst those cooks who manage to produce amazing things despite believing that there are only 2 settings on each cooker ring, i.e. low and blast it), was about all the attention that it needed.
So. A white, onionless, French onion soup. Absolutely delicious (under the over-vinegaring), especially with the giant cheesy croutons (gruyere is good) that Hswgo prepared for it, and one I'm going to try again soon (and not just because I have a glut of onions in the kitchen).
