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Young Onions

A dish of boiled young onions simmered in butter, milk, salt, pepper, and corn starch, finished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Young Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Cut off the stems and tops of the young onions.

  2. Skim and cook them in plenty of boiling water for 15 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In another saucepan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter over low heat.

  2. Add the cooked onions and a little chopped parsley, warming them slowly for 10 minutes.

  3. In a bowl, stir together the milk, salt, pepper, and corn starch.

  4. Add the milk mixture to the onions and simmer for 3 minutes, stirring several times.

Serve

  1. Pour out the mixture to serve.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Young onions
Form the main body of the dish and provide its sweet, mild flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor into the onions as they warm.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that coats the onions as it simmers.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture so it clings to the onions instead of running off.

The step that matters

Simmering the milk mixture with the onions. Corn starch thickens only when the liquid simmers and is stirred, so stirring during the 3 minutes keeps the sauce smooth and prevents lumps or a thin, watery result.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, pepper, corn, parsley. 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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