The Spirit of Seventy-Six!

In honor of the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence, all recipes through August 16, 2026 were from Centennial and Bicentennial cookbooks and the 1796 first American cookbook. I’ve also published a Sestercentennial Cookery with recipes and photos.

Caramelized Onions: Onions Caramelized in Brown Sugar, from Renny Darling’s 1976 Joy of Eating.; seventies; 1970s; onions; recipe; Renny Darling

If you enjoy onions on their own—baked onions, onion pie, creamed onions—you’ll enjoy this very easy to make side dish. Renny Darling’s serving suggestions include “steak, London broil, hamburgers”, and they are great with those—and, in the case of hamburgers, on them. They’re pretty much great with any barbecue, from ribs to fish.

If you don’t have smoked paprika, normal paprika should be fine. It’s what the original recipe calls for. But if you want to see how much of a difference smoked paprika makes, this is the perfect recipe to see.

Drop in again soon for another vintage recipe! I’ll have a different recipe every Sunday afternoon throughout the year. Keep an eye on this page or subscribe to the RSS feed for further details. You can also browse past featured Club recipes as well as some of the vintage promotional cookbooks I’ve used as sources. And I collect many of these recipes in A Traveling Man’s Cookery Book.

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If you are cooking for your family or your friends, you owe them the pleasure of your company. — Renny Darling (The Joy of Eating)