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Stuffed Spanish Onions

A savory dish of parboiled Spanish onions filled with seasoned force meat and bread crumbs, topped with buttered crumbs and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stuffed Spanish Onions

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions and cut out a part of the inside.

  2. Parboil the onions for five minutes and drain them.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the onions with the force meat mixed with moistened bread crumbs.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and melted butter.

  3. Cover the tops with buttered crumbs.

  4. Cook in a 350°F (175°C) oven until tender.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Spanish onions
Form the edible shell that holds the filling and softens as it cooks.
Force meat
Provides the savory, rich filling that cooks through inside the onions.
Moistened bread crumbs
Add bulk and moisture to the filling, keeping it tender rather than dense.
Buttered crumbs
Form a topping that browns in the oven and adds a crisp finish.

The step that matters

Parboil the onions for five minutes and drain them. Parboiling softens the onions enough to bake until tender without overcooking the filling. Draining well removes surface water so the filling and crumbs do not turn soggy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, bread, pepper, butter. 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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