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Young Onions Stewed

A stew of young onions cooked in salted water, milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Young Onions Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and parboil

  1. Skin and wash the young onions well.

  2. Cook the onions in boiling salted water for about 15 minutes until half-done.

Stew in milk

  1. Drain most of the water and add scalding milk to the pot.

  2. Cook the onions in the milk until tender.

  3. Stir in black pepper, salt, and a tablespoon of butter mixed with a teaspoon of flour.

  4. Simmer for 3 minutes and then pour out.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Young onions
Form the main body of the dish and become soft and sweet as they cook.
Milk
Provides the stewing liquid that turns creamy and mellows the onions' sharpness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and gives the sauce a smooth body.
Flour
Mixed with butter to thicken the milk into a lightly bound sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter and flour. Flour mixed with butter must be stirred in evenly and simmered briefly, so it thickens the milk without leaving lumps or a raw floury taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, pepper, butter, flour. 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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