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Baked Onions

Baked onions stuffed with a nut cream and breadcrumb mixture, then baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,171 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Baked Onions

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and boil the onions until slightly tender, being careful not to overcook them.

  2. Cut the onions in half and remove the centers.

  3. Place the onion halves in a pudding dish, cup side up.

Make the stuffing

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg, nut cream, grated nutmeat, salt, thyme, and enough bread crumbs to achieve the right consistency.

  2. Moisten the mixture with a little nut cream.

  3. Fill the onion cups with the stuffing.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

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. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Thyme + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,993 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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

Onions
Form the cups that hold the stuffing and soften as they cook.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds its shape when baked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the stuffing body and a firmer texture.
Nutmeat
Adds richness and body to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Boil the onions until only slightly tender. Onions keep softening in the oven, so overcooking them during boiling leaves cups that turn limp and collapse under the filling.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, egg, cream, 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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