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Boiled Onions

A simple dish of onions boiled, seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boiled Onions

Oven, in the book's wordsThe hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the tops and tails of the onions, then skim the skins off.

Cook the onions

  1. Cook the onions in boiling water for 15 minutes.

  2. Drain the water and discard it.

  3. Replenish the pot with boiling water, add a little salt, and stew the onions until tender, about 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Drain again, dish the onions, and season well with pepper and salt.

  2. Add butter liberally before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Become soft and tender as they cook, with a mellow, sweet flavour.
Butter
Adds fat, richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished onions.

The step that matters

Discarding the first cooking water. Onions release sharp, sulfur-based compounds into their cooking water. Pouring that water away and starting again with fresh boiling water leaves the onions milder and sweeter.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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