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Pickled Onions

Pickled onions are small onions preserved in hot spiced vinegar and optional sweet oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,226 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the small onions until they are white.

  2. Scald them in a mixture of salt and water until tender.

  3. Remove the onions and place them in wide-mouthed bottles.

Pickle and store

  1. Pour hot spiced vinegar over the onions.

  2. When the vinegar is cold, cork the bottles tightly.

  3. Optionally, add 1 tablespoon of sweet oil to the bottles before sealing.

  4. Store in a dry, dark place.

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 + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Small onions
Form the main body of the pickle, becoming tender and firm after scalding and soaking in vinegar.
Hot spiced vinegar
Acidity that preserves the onions and carries the spiced flavour into them as it cools.
Sweet oil
Adds richness and a mild fatty coating to the pickled onions.

The step that matters

Scald the onions until tender. Scalding softens the onions so they can absorb the vinegar. Under-scalded onions stay hard and sharp, while over-cooking makes them mushy and soft.

“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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