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Glazed Onions

Glazed onions are onions cooked with butter, sugar, salt, and brown stock until tender and coated in a sweet glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Glazed Onions

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the onions, butter, sugar, salt, and brown stock in a saucepan.

  2. Cook until the onions are tender and the stock has evaporated.

  3. Roll the onions in the remaining glaze to coat them completely.

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 + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + sugartop 36% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Onion and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,747 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 button onions
Provide the main body of the dish, becoming tender and sweet as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the onions brown and glaze.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the onions caramelize in the glaze.
Brown stock
Supplies liquid that cooks down into a savory glaze around the onions.

The step that matters

Cook until the stock has evaporated. If the liquid cooks off too early, the onions can scorch in the sugar and butter, while too much liquid left behind keeps the glaze thin. Watching the pan lets the stock reduce into a glaze that clings to the onions.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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