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Onion Nutora

A thickened peanut butter and onion mixture cooked and canned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peanut and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 346 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Onion Nutora

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Dissolve the peanut butter and corn starch in the water.

  2. Add the grated onions and salt, then beat thoroughly.

  3. Pour the mixture into tin cans.

Cook

  1. Cook for three hours.

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. Peanut + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together346 recipes

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

  2. Peanut + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,043 recipes

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

  3. Onion + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,205 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + oniontop 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

Raw peanut butter
Supplies fat and nutty flavour that gives the sauce its richness.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Grated onions
Adds sharp, savoury aroma and flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture thoroughly. Corn starch must be fully dispersed in the liquid before heating, or it clumps and the sauce turns out lumpy and uneven in thickness.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peanut, butter, corn. 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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