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Onions Boiled or Fried

This recipe describes how to boil or fry onions, seasoning them with salt, pepper, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Sterrett, Laura C · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and 26,984 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Onions Boiled or Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Wash and peel the onions. Boil for ten minutes. Drain the water. Add boiling water again, boil a few minutes, and drain a second time.

  2. Pour the onions into boiling water, add salt, and boil for one hour. Drain.

Finish and serve

  1. Place the onions in a colander, transfer to a dish for serving, and add butter and pepper.

  2. (Optional) About half an hour before they are done, turn a pint of milk into the water in which they are boiling, and when tender, season as above. Old onions require two hours to boil.

Fry the onions

  1. To fry onions: slice them and boil ten minutes each time in three waters, drain, fry, stir often, season, and serve hot.

By Sterrett, Laura C. 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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions (in the method)
Form the dish's main body; boiling softens them until tender.
Milk
Adds richness and a mild sweetness as it cooks into the boiling water.

“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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