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Escalloped Onions

A baked dish of stewed onions topped with a custard made from nut milk, zwieola, egg, and salt.

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

Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Escalloped Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Cook the onions until tender.

  2. Cut the onions in halves.

  3. Place the onion halves in a pudding dish.

Make and bake the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix the nut milk, zwieola, beaten egg, and salt.

  2. Pour the mixture over the onions.

  3. Bake until set.

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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Onion + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,333 recipes

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

Onion and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,333 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Stewed onions
Form the soft, sweet base that the custard is poured over.
Nut milk
Provides the liquid that gives the custard its body.
Well-beaten egg
Sets during baking to bind the custard into a firm, sliceable texture.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins coagulate as they heat, so the custard firms only when baked long enough. Underbaking leaves it loose and watery, while overbaking makes it rubbery and may cause it to weep liquid.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg. 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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