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Pickled Onions

Pickled onions preserved in a vinegar and salt brine with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the onions

  1. Pour hot salt water over the small white onions.

  2. Let them sit for two days in a salt brine.

  3. Drain the onions.

Pickle and jar

  1. Boil enough vinegar to cover them.

  2. Add the onions to the boiling vinegar. Boil for a few minutes.

  3. Layer the onions in glass jars with whole white peppercorns, cloves, sliced horseradish, mustard seed, and dill.

  4. Heat the vinegar. Mix in 1 cup of sugar per gallon of vinegar.

  5. Cover the jars to overflowing with the hot vinegar. Seal immediately.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Horseradish + dilltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + dilltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together560 recipes

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

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 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 onions
Form the main body of the pickle, staying crisp-tender once brined and pickled.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the onions.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Sealing the jars while the vinegar is hot. Covering the onions to overflowing with hot vinegar and sealing immediately drives air out and keeps the jar headspace free of air, which helps the pickle keep and stay firm.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove, horseradish, mustard, dill, 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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