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Stuffed Onions

Stuffed onions are onions filled with chopped onion, bread crumbs, butter, salt, pepper, and baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stuffed 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 the onions

  1. Peel the Spanish onions under water.

  2. Scoop out a piece from the top of each onion.

  3. Parboil the onions for 5 minutes.

  4. Turn the onions upside down to drain.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the onions with chopped onion, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and plenty of butter.

  2. Place the stuffed onions in a baking dish with a little water.

  3. Sprinkle the onions with more butter and bread crumbs.

  4. Cover the dish.

  5. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour or until tender.

  6. Uncover the onions.

  7. Brown the onions.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Spanish onions
Form the edible shell that softens and turns sweet when baked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the filling and helps the top brown.
Bread crumbs
Soak up butter and juices to give the stuffing a soft, moist body.

The step that matters

Parboil the onions for 5 minutes. Parboiling softens the onion layers so they become tender during baking without the shell staying firm or the centre undercooking. Draining them upside down removes excess water so the stuffing does not become soggy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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