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Baked Spanish Onions

A baked dish of sliced Spanish onions topped with butter, parsley, lemon, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Spanish Onions

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Peel the onions, clip off the ends, and cut them in half crosswise.

  3. Place the onions cut side up in a baking dish.

Bake

  1. Mix the butter, parsley, salt, pepper, and lemon juice together.

  2. Spread the mixture over the onions and cover with buttered paper.

  3. Bake for 35 minutes, basting frequently.

  4. Remove the paper, sprinkle the breadcrumbs on top, baste well, and return to the oven for an additional 10 minutes.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Spanish onions
Provide the main body of the dish, softening into tender, sweet flesh as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, carrying the seasonings and helping the onions brown gently.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the onions.
Grated bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping when added near the end of baking.

The step that matters

Covering with buttered paper, then removing it for the breadcrumbs. The paper traps steam so the onions cook through and stay moist; removing it before the final bake lets the crumbs crisp and brown. Basting keeps the surface from drying out.

Swap the onion

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

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

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