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Stuffed Spanish Onions

A dish of peeled onions filled with a buttered breadcrumb mixture, baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Stuffed Spanish Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions under water and scoop out a portion from the top center.

  2. Parboil the onions for 5 minutes, then turn them upside down to drain.

Stuff and cook

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped onion from the centers, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and ⅓ cup of butter.

  2. Fill the onions heaping full with the stuffing and sprinkle the tops with remaining butter.

  3. Cover the onions and cook in a pan with a small amount of water for about 1 hour until tender.

  4. Let them brown slightly before removing from the oven.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Form the edible shell that softens and turns sweet as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the stuffing so it holds its shape in the onion.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the tops brown.

The step that matters

Cover and cook with a small amount of water. Covered, the water turns to steam that softens the onions evenly. Too little water can scorch the bottom of the pan before the onions are tender, and the cooking liquid should not be allowed to boil away.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, butter. 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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