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Scalloped Onions

Layered onions baked with breadcrumbs, pepper, salt, and butter or suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Scalloped Onions

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 ↓

Scalloped 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

  1. Boil the onions until tender.

  2. Separate the onions and layer them in a pudding dish, seasoning each layer with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover each layer with breadcrumbs.

  2. Top with a few pieces of butter or suet dripping.

  3. Brown in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Provide the main body and sweet, soft texture once boiled and layered.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping that browns in the oven.
Butter or suet dripping
Adds fat that enriches flavor and helps the topping brown.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter. 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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