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To Pickle Onions

A method for pickling small button onions in a vinegar brine with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Pickle Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel small button onions and soak them in a mixture of milk and water with plenty of coarse sea salt.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Strain the onions and wipe them dry.

Pack and pickle

  1. Place the onions in glass jars.

  2. In a separate pot, boil cold white wine vinegar with whole white pepper, ginger, mace, and slices of horseradish.

  3. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the onions.

  4. Cover the jars with bladder and leather.

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 + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

  3. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Ginger + macetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Small button onions
Form the main body of the pickle, becoming tender and mild as they cook and soak.
Cold white wine vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve the onions.
Slices of horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma and heat that flavours the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Wipe the onions dry before packing. Water left on the onions dilutes the hot vinegar mixture poured over them, weakening its acidity and flavour. Drying them first keeps the pickling liquid strong.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, milk, white wine, vinegar, ginger, mace, horseradish):

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, milk, white wine, vinegar, ginger, mace, horseradish. 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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