Skip to main content
Main

Onions Boiled or Fried

A dish of onions boiled or fried, seasoned with salt, butter, pepper, and optional milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Onions Boiled or Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Parboil the onions

  1. Wash and peel the onions.

  2. Boil the onions in water for 10 minutes, then drain them.

  3. Add boiling water again and boil the onions for a few minutes.

  4. Drain the onions a second time.

  5. Pour boiling water over the onions and add coarse sea salt.

  6. Boil the onions for 1 hour.

  7. Drain the onions in a colander.

Finish and season

  1. Place the onions in a dish.

  2. Add butter.

  3. Add pepper.

  4. For a creamier version, add 1 pint of milk to the boiling water 30 minutes before the onions are done.

Fry and serve

  1. To fry onions, slice them.

  2. Boil the sliced onions for 10 minutes in three changes of water.

  3. Drain the sliced onions.

  4. Fry the drained onions, stirring them often.

  5. Season the fried onions.

  6. Serve hot.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  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 + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Form the dish itself, becoming soft and sweet as they are boiled and fried.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the onions brown and carry flavour.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the onions when used in the boiling water.

The step that matters

Stir the onions often while frying. Onions contain natural sugars that caramelise over moderate heat. Stirring spreads heat evenly and prevents hot spots, so the onions brown gently rather than scorching before they turn golden.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

More fried onions recipes

Parmesan 3 See all 72 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes