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To Pickle Onions

A method for pickling small white button onions in a brine of salt, water, vinegar, pepper, mustard seed, and sweet oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Pickle Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions until they are white.

  2. Scald the onions in strong salt and water, then remove them with a skimmer.

Pickle

  1. Boil enough vinegar to cover the onions.

  2. Strew whole pepper and white mustard seed over the onions.

  3. Pour the hot vinegar over the onions to cover them.

  4. When the mixture is cold, place the onions in wide-mouthed bottles and cork them tightly.

  5. Optionally, add 1 tablespoon of sweet oil to the bottles before corking.

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 + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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 button onions
Form the pickled vegetable itself, becoming crisp-tender and firm after brining and pickling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the onions as they steep.
White mustard seed
Adds a pungent, aromatic bite that flavours the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Scald the onions in strong salt and water. Brief scalding and salt soften the onions slightly and draw out moisture, so they absorb the vinegar evenly and stay firm rather than turning mushy or waterlogged.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, mustard. 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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