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Stewed Onions

Stewed onions are onions simmered in milk and butter, seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Stewed Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select small onions of the same size and peel them.

  2. Soak the onions in cold water for one hour.

Cook the onions

  1. Boil the onions until half cooked, then drain.

  2. Cover the onions with water again and cook until tender, then drain the water.

Finish

  1. Add one cup of milk.

  2. Add one tablespoon of butter.

  3. Season with pepper and salt.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + peppertop 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

Small onions
Form the body of the dish and become soft and sweet as they cook.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the cooked onions.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, glossy finish.

The step that matters

Boil until half cooked, then drain. Boiling only until half cooked leaves the onions partly firm so they can finish cooking to tender in the second stage. Boiling too long first can make them break apart and turn mushy.

Swap the onion

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

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

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