Pickled Onions
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the onions
Peel small onions until they are white.
Scald them in salt and water until tender.
Take them up and put them into wide-mouthed bottles.
Pickle and store
Pour hot spiced vinegar over them.
When cold, add a tablespoonful of sweet oil to the bottles before corking.
Cork them closed.
Keep in a dry, dark place.
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
What each ingredient does
- Onions (in the method)
- The main vegetable; scalding softens it so it takes on the vinegar flavour.
- Vinegar (in the method)
- Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the onions and gives the pickle its tang.
- Sweet oil
- Forms a thin film on the surface of the liquid, helping to seal the bottle.
The step that matters
Scalding the onions until tender. Scalding softens the onions so they can absorb the vinegar. Cooking them too long makes them soft and mushy, while stopping too early leaves them hard and less receptive to the pickling liquid.
“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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