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Dressed Raw Onions

A quick pickled onion recipe using vinegar, mustard, chili vinegar, sugar, and salt, finished with ice and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Dressed Raw Onions

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and chop the onions finely.

  2. Soak the chopped onions in water with a little salt for about an hour.

  3. Drain the onions and place them on a dish.

Pickle and serve

  1. Pour over a mixture of vinegar, mustard, chili vinegar, sugar, and salt.

  2. Place a lump of ice on top and garnish with curled parsley.

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. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  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

Onions
Form the main body of the dish and absorb the pickling liquid, becoming tender and mildly sharp.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the onions.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.
Made mustard
Adds pungency and a savoury, sharp flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Soaking the chopped onions. Soaking in salted water for about an hour draws out some of the sharp sulfur compounds that make raw onion harsh, leaving a milder flavour and crisper texture. Draining well before adding the pickling liquid keeps excess water from diluting the vinegar.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, mustard, sugar. 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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