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Pickled Onions

Pickled onions made with salt, celery seed, mustard seed, cayenne pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Slice 1 quart of small onions very thin.

  2. Sprinkle with ½ cup coarse sea salt, place in a colander, cover with a plate, and weigh down with a stone. Let drain for 5 hours.

  3. Fill jars with the drained onions.

Pickle

  1. Mix 1 ounce celery seed, 2 ounces mustard seed, and 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper with 1 cup olive oil.

  2. Gradually add 2 quarts cold vinegar, then pour over the pickles and screw on the tops.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Small onions
Form the bulk of the pickle; salting first draws out water so the slices can take up the brine.
Cold vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the onions.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor to the pickling mixture.
Celery seed
Adds a savory, aromatic flavor to the pickles.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat to the pickling mixture.

The step that matters

Draining the salted onions. Salt draws water out of the onion slices. If they are not drained fully, the leftover water dilutes the vinegar and weakens both flavor and preservation.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, mustard, pepper, 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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