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Stuffed Onions, Creamed

Creamed stuffed onions filled with ham and onion hearts, baked with butter and crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Stuffed Onions, Creamed

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the onions

  1. Boil the onions gently until tender but not broken. Drain and let cool.

  2. Carefully remove the centers of the onions and chop three of them finely.

Fill and bake

  1. Mix the chopped onion hearts with the minced ham, season to taste, and moisten with cream and the beaten egg yolk.

  2. Fill the centers of the onions with the mixture and place a piece of butter on top of each.

  3. Arrange the onions side by side in a deep dish, pour a little milk around them, and bake covered at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

  4. Uncover, sprinkle with buttered crumbs, and bake for an additional 10 minutes. Serve hot.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 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
Hold the filling as edible cups and soften to a sweet, tender base.
Minced ham
Adds savory, salty flavor and substance to the filling.
Rich cream
Adds moisture and richness so the filling stays soft when baked.
Egg yolk
Binds the filling so it holds together and sets gently when baked.
Buttered crumbs
Form a golden, crisp topping through browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Covered baking, then uncovering. Baking covered first lets the onions and filling heat through and soften without drying out. Uncovering only for the final bake lets the crumb topping brown. Keeping the onions whole during boiling matters too, since broken onions cannot hold the filling.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, cream, egg, butter, milk. 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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