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Boiled Onions

A dish of boiled onions topped with milk gravy, butter, and bread crumbs.

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

Boiled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Cut off the tops and bottoms of the onions.

  2. Remove the outer skins of the onions.

  3. Place the onions in cold water.

Boil and drain

  1. Boil the onions for 15 minutes.

  2. Drain the onions.

  3. Cook the onions in boiling salted water until tender.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the onions to a pudding dish.

  2. Cut the onions into small pieces.

  3. Pour the hot milk gravy over the onions.

  4. Add a few bits of butter.

  5. Sprinkle the top with bread crumbs.

  6. Bake until brown.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Form the main body of the dish, becoming soft and sweet as they cook.
Milk gravy
Adds moisture and richness, soaking into the onions as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and helps the crumb topping brown.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping on the baked dish.

The step that matters

Boil until tender. Onions must be fully softened before baking, since the oven only browns the top and will not cook through dense onion. Cooking them in boiling salted water also seasons them evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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

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