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Patna or Bombay Onion Pickle

A pickled onion condiment made with onions, chillies, peppercorns, ginger, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,595 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Patna or Bombay Onion Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the outer coats from the onions, wash, and dry them thoroughly.

Parboil

  1. Place the onions in a pan with vinegar and parboil them.

Pack and pickle

  1. Once cold, layer the parboiled onions in wide-mouthed bottles with chillies, peppercorns, ginger, and salt.

  2. Fill the bottles with vinegar, cork them, and place them in the sun for a few days.

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 + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

  2. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Ginger + vinegartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,126 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Small button onions
Form the bulk of the pickle and soften slightly when parboiled in vinegar.
Vinegar
Acidifies the onions and preserves them, keeping them firm and tangy in the bottles.
Red fresh chillies
Add heat that penetrates the onions as they sit in the vinegar.
Green ginger
Adds aromatic, pungent flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Parboiling the onions. Parboiling briefly in vinegar softens the onions and lets them absorb the acidic liquid, while overcooking turns them mushy and weakens their texture in the jar.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar. 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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