Skip to main content
Main

Onion Pickle

A preserved onion dish made by scalding, sun-drying, and brining with vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Onion Pickle

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions.

  2. Scald the onions in strong salt water for 25-30 minutes.

  3. Remove the onions.

  4. Lay the onions on dishes in the sun for 1-2 days.

  5. Pour boiling water over the onions.

  6. Let the onions sit until the brine cools.

Brine and soak

  1. Change the brine.

  2. Warm the brine each day for 9 mornings.

  3. Soak the onions in fresh water for 1 day and night.

Pickle and finish

  1. Boil the spices and vinegar.

  2. Add the onions for a few minutes.

  3. Add sugar to taste.

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).

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

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

  3. Onion + sugartop 36% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Onion and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,747 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 pickle and absorb the brine and vinegar flavours as they soften.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the onions and defines the pickle's tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness, added to taste.

The step that matters

Scalding the onions in strong salt water. Salt draws water out of the onions and firms their texture, while too long or too hot a scald can make them limp. Timing matters because the onions must stay crisp enough to hold their shape through the later soaking and pickling.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes