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Pickled Onions

A pickled onion recipe using water, milk, mace, salt, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,431 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions without cutting off the tops.

  2. Place them in a porcelain kettle with cold water and sweet milk.

  3. Heat until hot but not boiling, then set aside for 15 minutes.

  4. Spread the onions on a cloth-covered table to cool.

Pack and seal

  1. Once cool, pack them into half-pint wide-necked glass jars.

  2. Add the blade of mace and salt to each jar.

  3. Fill the jars with cold cider vinegar, cork tightly, and seal with wax.

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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  4. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  5. Mace + cidertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together658 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Button onions
Form the main body of the pickle, staying firm and crisp once packed in vinegar.
Sweet milk
Its proteins and sugars soften the onions' sharp sulfur compounds, mellowing their flavour.
Cold cider vinegar
Acidity preserves the onions and gives the pickle its tangy, sharp character.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the vinegar and onions.

The step that matters

Heating the onions in milk and water. Heating only until hot, not boiling, softens the onions and mellows their harsh bite without breaking them down. Boiling would make them mushy and could toughen the texture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, milk, cider, vinegar):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, milk, cider, vinegar. 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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