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Salad

To Dress Raw Onions

A salad of sliced raw onions dressed with vinegar, pepper, mustard, sugar, and salt, topped with ice and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Dress Raw Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Soak the sliced onions in weak salt water until just before dinner.

Dress and serve

  1. Drain the onions and dress them with vinegar, pepper, mustard, sugar, and salt.

  2. Place a large lump of ice on top of the dressed onions.

  3. Garnish with curled parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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
Provide the main bulk and a sharp, pungent flavor that the dressing softens.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the onions and balances the sweetness of the sugar.
White sugar
Offsets the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard for a rounder flavor.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavor and aroma to the dressing.

The step that matters

Soak the sliced onions in weak salt water. Soaking draws out some of the sulfur compounds that make raw onion harsh, mellowing the flavor. Timing matters: soaking too long can make the onions limp and watery, so it is done just before serving.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, mustard, sugar, parsley):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, mustard, sugar, parsley. 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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