Name: Silver Onions
Ingredients: small clear onions; coarse sea salt; distilled vinegar; sweet salad oil; ginger; mace; bay leaf

Why it works: Onion and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,595 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Silver Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Peel the small clear onions and immerse them in cold saltwater for ten days, changing the brine daily.
Drain the onions on a sieve.
Place the onions in a jar and pour boiling hot brine of salt and water over them.
Cover the jar and let it cool.
Repeat the scalding with new brine, then drain the onions well.
Add slices of ginger, a blade of mace, and a bay leaf to the jar.
Fill the jar with distilled vinegar and add sweet salad oil to float on top.
Seal the jar tightly for storage.

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.

Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,595 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Ginger + macetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,152 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,226 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,078 recipes

Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
Vinegar + gingertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,126 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).