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Stuffed Onions

A baked dish of onions filled with a ham or tongue and breadcrumb mixture, finished with butter and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Onions

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the onions

  1. Boil the onions without peeling for 1 hour.

  2. Drain, remove the skins, and cut out the center of each onion.

Fill and bake

  1. Mix the chopped ham or tongue with the bread crumbs.

  2. Pour in the melted butter, cream, salt, and pepper; stir to combine.

  3. Fill the onions with the mixture and place them in a baking pan.

  4. Baste the onions with melted butter and dust with bread crumbs.

  5. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 1 hour.

  6. Serve with cream sauce poured over them.

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. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 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

Onions
Hold the filling and soften into tender, sweet shells as they cook.
Cooked ham or tongue
Adds savory meaty flavor to the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Bind the filling and absorb the butter and cream for a moist texture.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the crumbs brown on the surface.
Cream
Moistens the stuffing and keeps it soft as it bakes.

The step that matters

Cut out the center of each onion. Removing too little leaves the shell thick and firm, while removing too much can tear the onion and let filling leak out. Keep the shell intact to hold the stuffing.

Swap the onion

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

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

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