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Pickled Onions

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 437 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the onions in a strong saltwater solution until it can float an egg; change the water daily.

  2. Make a strong brine and pour it over the onions while boiling hot for 3 days.

  3. Drain the onions on a sieve.

  4. Place the onions in a jar and cover with good vinegar.

  5. Add mace and horseradish.

  6. For white onions, add salt and oil on top; for yellow, mix in 2 to 3 tablespoons of turmeric with the vinegar.

  7. Seal the jar tightly; they will keep indefinitely for table use.

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. Horseradish + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + turmerictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,913 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Swap the turmeric

The recipe marks turmeric as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, vinegar, mace, horseradish):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Turmericthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, mace, horseradish. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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