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Pickled Onions

Pickled onions preserved in brine, alum, and vinegar with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Brine and firm

  1. Peel the onions and cover them with brine made from ½ cup salt dissolved in 1 gallon boiling water.

  2. Let the onions stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the onions and cover them with boiling water mixed with 1 teaspoon alum.

  4. Let them stand for several hours, then drain off the water.

Pack and pickle

  1. Pack the onions into jars and cover them with boiling vinegar spiced with whole black pepper, allspice, and cinnamon to taste.

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

  5. Onion + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Small white onions
The main vegetable, which softens slightly while keeping a firm bite after brining and pickling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the onions in the brine, firming them and seasoning them throughout.
Alum
A firming agent that helps the onions keep their crisp texture during soaking.
Boiling vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the pickled onions their tang and helps preserve them.

The step that matters

Soaking in boiling water with alum. Alum is a firming agent that helps onions stay crisp. Draining off the alum water fully before packing keeps the flavor clean and the texture firm.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, allspice, cinnamon):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, allspice, cinnamon. 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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