Skip to main content
Main

Pickled Onions

Pickled onions preserved in vinegar with allspice and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Place small white onions in cold water with ½ cup coarse sea salt.

  2. Heat the water until scalding hot.

  3. Remove the onions from the water.

  4. Peel off the skins of the onions.

  5. Lay the peeled onions on a cloth to dry.

  6. Place the dried onions in a jar.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Boil ½ ounce allspice and ½ ounce cloves in 1 quart vinegar.

  2. Remove the spices from the vinegar.

Pickle and store

  1. Pour the hot vinegar over the onions.

  2. Seal the jar when the vinegar is cool and store it in a dry place.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Onion + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Small white onions
Form the main body of the pickle and soften slightly when scalded.
Vinegar
Acidifies the liquid and preserves the onions while carrying the spice flavour.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the pickling vinegar.
Cloves
Add pungent, aromatic flavour to the pickling vinegar.

The step that matters

Seal the jar only when the vinegar is cool. Sealing hot vinegar in a jar can create pressure and cause the jar to fail or leak. Letting the vinegar cool first keeps the seal safe and lets the onions pickle evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, allspice, clove):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, allspice, clove. 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.

More pickled onions recipes

and Apples 3and Cucumbers 3 See all 163 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes