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Escalloped Onions

A dish of sliced onions cooked in water, layered with bread crumbs, butter, and cream or milk, then baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Escalloped Onions

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Escalloped Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Slice the onions as you would for frying.

  2. Cook the onions in water for a few minutes.

Assemble and bake

  1. Drain the water and layer the onions in a baking pan.

  2. Add a layer of bread crumbs and season each layer with salt, pepper, butter, and cream or milk.

  3. Bake in the oven until browned.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Onions
Form the main body of the dish and become soft and sweet as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Add a layer that soaks up liquid and helps the top brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the top brown and the flavour feel fuller.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture that softens the layers and helps set them into a tender, custardy texture.

The step that matters

Cook the onions in water for a few minutes. Brief pre-cooking softens the onions so they become tender during baking. Draining well matters, because excess water thins the liquid and keeps the dish from setting and browning properly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, butter, cream):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, butter, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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