Why it works: Onion and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Stewed Onions
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Trim, cut off the tops and tails, and peel the onions.
Boil the onions in two separate pots of water, discarding the water each time.
Stew and serve
Once the onions are tender, place them in a saucepan with 1 cup of drawn butter.
Simmer for 10 minutes and serve with the sauce.
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.
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Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together42,912 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Onions
- Provide the main body and sweetness as they soften and mellow during stewing.
- Drawn butter
- Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the onions a silky texture.
The step that matters
Boiling the onions in two changes of water. Boiling in fresh water each time helps draw out sharp, sulfurous compounds from the onions, leaving a milder, sweeter flavour for the stew.
“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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