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Pickled Onions

Onions pickled in brine, vinegar, sugar, mace, peppercorns, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the onions

  1. Peel the onions and soak them in strong brine for four days, changing the brine twice.

  2. Boil the onions in more brine for three minutes.

  3. Immediately transfer the onions to cold water and let them soak for four hours.

Pickle and store

  1. Pack the onions in jars, adding whole mace, white peppercorns, and cloves between layers.

  2. Fill the jars with scalding vinegar mixed with 1 cup of sugar for every gallon.

  3. Cork the jars while hot.

  4. Let the pickled onions sit for a month, but they will taste better after three months.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fine white onions
Form the main body of the pickle, becoming tender and mild as they cure.
Strong brine
Draws moisture out of the onions and seasons them before pickling.
Scalding vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the onions and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling the onions briefly in brine. Boiling for only three minutes softens the onions slightly without cooking them through. Longer boiling would make them mushy, and the brief step must be followed immediately by cold water to stop the cooking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mace, clove, vinegar, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mace, clove, vinegar, sugar. 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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