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Another Wat to Stew Onions

A stew of onions cooked with a meat bone, bacon, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Another Wat to Stew Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the onions

  1. Peel the onions and roast them in a Dutch oven, turning frequently until well browned.

Stew

  1. Transfer the browned onions to a saucepan with the meat bone, bacon, water, and pepper.

  2. Cover the pan and stew until the onions are tender.

  3. Remove the bone and bacon from the pan.

Thicken and finish

  1. Thicken the sauce by rolling the butter in flour and adding it to the pan.

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.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Become sweet and soft when browned and stewed, forming the body of the dish.
Butter
Combined with flour to form a roux-like paste that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid when mixed with butter and added to the pan.
Bacon
Adds savory, smoky fat and flavor to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Roasting the onions until well browned. Browning triggers the Maillard reaction and caramelization, which build the deep, sweet flavor the stew depends on. Pale onions will taste flat and boiled.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, butter, flour. 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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