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Stuffed Onions

A baked dish of onions filled with forcemeat, herbs, and bacon, topped with a sauce made from the cooking juices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cut the tops off the onions and remove the insides, leaving a shell.

  3. Fill each onion with forcemeat and place them in a well-buttered saucepan.

  4. Add the bundle of herbs and cover with bacon slices.

Cook and make the sauce

  1. Cook until the onions are tender.

  2. Remove the onions and make a sauce with the remaining juices by adding flour and stock.

  3. Skim off excess fat, strain the sauce, and pour it over the onions before serving.

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

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

  2. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Form the edible shell that holds the forcemeat and cooks down to a tender, sweet base.
Forcemeat
Fills the onion shells, adding savory body and moisture as it cooks.
Bacon
Covers the onions, releasing fat that bastes them and adds savory flavor.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices and stock into a smooth sauce.
Stock or broth
Provides the liquid base for the sauce, adding savory depth.

The step that matters

Skim off excess fat before straining the sauce. Bacon and forcemeat release fat into the pan juices. Skimming removes the excess so the sauce stays smooth and not greasy once the flour and stock are added.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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