Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Onion

A dish of onions filled with sausage, parsley, sweet pepper, breadcrumbs, and butter, baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Stuffed Onion

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Scoop out the center of the onions, leaving a shell about ½ inch thick.

  2. Make a forcemeat using sausage as the base.

  3. Add some of the onion heart, parsley, sweet pepper, coarse sea salt, bread crumbs, and enough water to bind it together.

Stuff and bake

  1. Fill the onion shell with the mixture and place a lump of butter on top.

  2. Place the stuffed onions in a pan with a little water and bake at 400°F (200°C) until tender.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Form the edible shell that holds the filling and softens as it bakes.
Sausage
Provides fat and savory flavor as the base of the forcemeat.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the forcemeat hold together when bound with water.
Butter
Adds fat and richness that browns on top of the filling in the oven.

The step that matters

Bind the forcemeat with water. Too little water leaves the filling crumbly, while too much makes it wet and loose. Bread crumbs soak up the liquid and gel with the sausage fat, so the stuffing holds its shape when baked.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes