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To Pickle Onions

A method for pickling small white button onions in a salt, vinegar, pepper, and mustard seed brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Pickle Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions until they are white.

  2. Scald them in a mixture of strong salt and water, then remove the onions with a skimmer.

Pickle and bottle

  1. Prepare enough boiling hot vinegar to cover the onions.

  2. Strew whole pepper and white mustard seed over the onions, then pour the hot vinegar over the onions to cover them.

  3. Once cold, place the onions in wide-mouthed bottles and cork them tightly.

  4. Optionally, add 1 tablespoon of sweet oil to the bottles before corking.

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 + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Small white button onions
Form the main body of the pickle, staying firm and crisp once brined and covered in vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that preserves the onions and defines the pickled flavour.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma and flavour that infuses into the vinegar.

The step that matters

Pour the vinegar hot and cover the onions fully. The vinegar must be boiling hot and must cover the onions completely so that the acid penetrates evenly and keeps the onions submerged, which helps preserve them and prevents spoilage at the surface.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, mustard. 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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