Name: Onions Young, to Pickle
Ingredients: small silver onions; ½ quart vinegar; ½ ounce black pepper; ¼ ounce allspice; ¼ ounce garlic; 1 sliced nutmeg

Why it works: Allspice and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Onions Young, to Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

Place small silver onions in cold water.
When the water is scalding hot, remove the onions with a slotted spoon.
Peel the skins until the onions are white and clear.
Lay the peeled onions on a cloth.

Pickle

In a pot, boil vinegar with black pepper, allspice, garlic, and nutmeg.
Pour the boiling vinegar and spices over the onions in a jar.
Once cooled, cover the jar with leather.

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.

Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,331 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,090 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Small silver onions: The main vegetable, which becomes tender and takes on the pickling flavours.
Vinegar: Provides the sharp acidity that flavours the onions and helps preserve them.
Black pepper: Adds sharp, warm bite and aroma to the spiced brine.
Allspice: Adds warm, clove-like aroma to the brine.
Garlic: Adds pungent aroma that mellows during pickling.
Nutmeg: Adds warm, sweet aroma to the spiced brine.

Swap the nutmeg

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

Thymefits better
Parsleyfits better
Clovefits better
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, pepper, allspice, garlic. 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.