Skip to main content
Main

Delicious Baked Onions

A dish of sliced onions simmered with baking soda, mixed with white sauce, topped with bread crumbs, and baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,676 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Delicious Baked Onions

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the onions

  1. Peel and slice the onions.

  2. Add baking soda and simmer in boiling salted water until tender.

Assemble and bake

  1. Drain the onions and mix with white sauce.

  2. Transfer to a baking dish and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

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 + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + breadtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Onion and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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

Onions
Form the main bulk and become soft and sweet as they cook.
Baking soda
Raises the cooking water's alkalinity, helping onions soften faster.
White sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy binding that keeps the onions tender in the dish.
Bread crumbs
Form a topping that becomes golden and crisp in the oven.

The step that matters

Simmer only until tender. Baking soda raises the water's alkalinity and softens onions quickly, so overcooking can make them mushy and lose their shape before baking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, bread):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, bread. 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.

More baked onions recipes

Spanish 5 See all 50 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes