Name: Scalloped Onions
Ingredients: onions; cracker crumbs; milk; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Onion and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,418 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Scalloped Onions

Ingredients

onions
cracker crumbs
milk
coarse sea salt

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Boil the onions until tender.
In a deep dish, layer the onions and cracker crumbs alternately until the dish is filled.
Add enough milk to cover the layers.
Season with coarse sea salt.

Bake

Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

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.

Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,418 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions: Provide the main body and soft, sweet flavour of the dish as they cook.
Cracker crumbs: Absorb liquid and help hold the layers together as the dish bakes.
Milk: Supplies moisture that cooks the layers and forms a creamy, set sauce.

“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.