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Pickled Onions

Pickled onions prepared with brine, horseradish, cinnamon bark, cayenne pepper, cloves, brown sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Remove all outer skins from the onions until they are clean and white.

  2. Soak the onions in brine for 3 days, then drain.

Pack and pickle

  1. In a jar, layer onions 3 inches deep, sprinkling with horseradish, cinnamon bark, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Repeat layering until the jar is filled, using ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper, 2 teaspoons chopped horseradish, 2 teaspoons cloves, and 4 tablespoons cinnamon bark for every gallon of pickles.

  3. Boil vinegar and add 2 heaping cups of brown sugar, then pour over the onions.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Horseradish + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Horseradish + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
The main vegetable, becoming tender and mild as they absorb the brine and spiced vinegar.
Brine
Salt draws moisture out of the onions and seasons them, softening their sharp raw bite.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the onions and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavor.
Brown sugar
Sweetness balances the sharpness of the vinegar and rounds out the flavor.
Horseradish
Pungent compounds add a sharp, hot bite that fades somewhat during pickling.
Cloves
Warm aromatic oils add a spiced fragrance to the pickling liquid and onions.

The step that matters

Covering the onions with vinegar. Onions left exposed above the liquid can spoil or discolor, so the vinegar must fully cover them. The acid preserves the onions only where it fully contacts them.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, horseradish, cinnamon, pepper, clove, sugar, vinegar. 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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