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Scalloped Onions

A baked dish of sliced onions layered with butter, breadcrumbs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Scalloped Onions

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Scalloped Onions

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cook the sliced onions in boiling water for 30 minutes, then drain.

  2. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  3. Grease a baking dish with butter and coat it with bread crumbs.

  4. In a bowl, mix the remaining bread crumbs with butter, pepper, and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer half of the cooked onions in the dish, sprinkle with seasoned crumbs and small pieces of butter.

  2. Add the remaining onions and repeat the layering with crumbs and butter.

  3. Top the last layer with extra crumbs, pour in the milk, and bake 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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
Main vegetable; cooking softens them and their sweetness becomes mellow in the baked dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the crumb topping brown in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping and absorb some liquid to hold the layers together.
Milk
Provides moisture and creates a creamy, set sauce around the onions as it bakes.

The step that matters

Pour in the milk and bake until browned. The milk needs to be poured over the layered onions so it reaches the lower layers and sets into a creamy sauce, while the bread crumb topping browns in the oven.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, pepper, milk. 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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