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Boiled Onions

A dish of boiled onions simmered in scalding milk, butter, corn starch, and seasoned with parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Parboil the onions

  1. Skin the onions thoroughly and boil them in water for a few minutes.

  2. Pour off the water, add clean cold water, and boil again.

  3. Repeat pouring off the water and adding cold water until the onions are done.

  4. Drain the onions and cut large ones into quarters.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour 1 cup of scalding milk over the onions.

  2. Add a pinch of baking soda.

  3. Set over the fire.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of butter.

  5. Add ½ teaspoon of corn-starch mixed with milk.

Finish and serve

  1. Add minced parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Simmer and serve.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Form the main body of the dish and turn soft and mild as they cook.
Milk
Provides the creamy liquid that forms the sauce around the onions.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Corn-starch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the sauce body.

The step that matters

Mixing the corn-starch with milk before adding it. Starch added dry clumps in hot liquid and stays grainy. Dispersing it in cold milk first lets the granules separate, so heating thickens the sauce evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, corn, parsley, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, corn, parsley, pepper. 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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