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Pickled Onions— No. 2.

Pickled onions preserved in a spiced brine with mace, pepper, cloves, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Pickled Onions— No. 2.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the small white onions and soak them in strong brine for three days.

  2. Remove the onions from the brine and boil them for 15 minutes.

Pack and store

  1. Pack the boiled onions into jars with mace, black pepper, red pepper, cloves, and sugar.

  2. Seal the jars and let them sit for one month before using.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Small white onions
Main vegetable; boiling softens their texture and mellows their sharpness.
Strong brine
Salt draws moisture from the onions and seasons them throughout during the three-day soak.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the salty brine and the sharp onion flavor.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the packed onions.

The step that matters

Soaking in strong brine for three days. Salt needs time to move into the onions and season them evenly, and the brine must be strong enough to keep the onions from spoiling. Rushing this step leaves the flavor shallow and uneven.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mace, pepper, clove, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mace, pepper, clove, sugar. 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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