Skip to main content
Main

Onions

This recipe preserves onions by boiling them and then pickling in white wine vinegar with allspice and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the brown skin off the onions.

  2. Boil water in a tin stew-pan and add enough onions to cover the top.

  3. Once the onions are clear on the outside, quickly remove them with a slotted spoon and place them on a clean cloth.

  4. Cover the onions with another cloth and repeat the process until all are cooked.

Pickle and store

  1. Let the onions cool, then place them in a jar or wide-mouthed bottle.

  2. Pour hot (but not boiling) white wine vinegar over the onions.

  3. Add 1 ounce of allspice and 1 ounce of black pepper for each gallon of vinegar.

  4. Once cooled, cover the jars.

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. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Onion + white winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,535 recipes

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

  5. Onion + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Small white round onions
Main vegetable that becomes tender and mellow after brief cooking and pickling.
Best white wine vinegar
Acidic liquid that preserves the onions and gives them their sharp, tangy flavour.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the pickling liquid.
Whole black pepper
Adds aromatic heat and spice to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Pouring hot, not boiling, vinegar over the onions. Vinegar that is too hot can soften the onions further and make them limp, while the spices need enough warmth to release their aroma into the liquid. Keeping the vinegar hot but below boiling balances these effects.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, allspice, 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.

More pickled onions recipes

and Apples 3and Cucumbers 3 See all 163 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes