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Onions Glazed

Onions Glazed is a sweet and savory dish of onions cooked slowly in butter, sugar, and stock until caramelized.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Onions Glazed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions and boil them in water for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain and place them in cold water, then peel off the first two skins.

  3. Scrape out the middle of each onion with a teaspoon to create a well the size of a hickory nut.

Glaze

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and place the onions bottom side down.

  2. Add ½ teaspoon of sugar to each onion and cook slowly until soft and slightly colored.

  3. Add the stock, cover the pan, and cook slowly until the stock reduces to a molasses-like consistency.

  4. Baste the onions constantly with the liquid until they are thoroughly glazed.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + sugartop 36% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Onion and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,747 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 main body of the dish, becoming soft and sweet as they cook slowly.
Butter
Fat that conducts heat in the pan and helps the onions brown lightly.
Sugar
Caramelizes on the onion surfaces, adding sweetness and golden color.
Stock
Reduces into a thick liquid that coats the onions as a glaze.

The step that matters

Cooking the stock down to a glaze. If the heat is too high or the pan is left uncovered at the wrong time, the stock can scorch or reduce unevenly before the onions are tender. Slow cooking with the lid on softens the onions, and constant basting then spreads the reduced sugars and stock into an even glaze.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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