Why it works: Onion and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Boiled Onions
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Remove the skins from the onions.
Boil
Cover the onions with boiling water and boil for 10 minutes.
Drain the onions and cover them again with boiling salted water.
Cook until tender, then drain again.
Serve
Add butter and sprinkle with salt before serving.
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.
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Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together42,912 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Onions
- Are the main vegetable, becoming soft and sweeter as they cook.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a smooth, savoury flavour to the finished onions.
“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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