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Pickled Onions

Pickled onions preserved in a vinegar and spice brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,226 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Skin the small white onions and soak them in salt water overnight.

Pickle and seal

  1. Boil enough vinegar to cover the onions with ½ ounce of mace and ½ ounce of whole peppercorns for every half peck of onions.

  2. Add the onions to the boiling vinegar and spices for five minutes.

  3. Once cooled, pack the onions into wide-mouthed bottles and seal them tightly with corks.

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 + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. Vinegar + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,415 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Small white onions
Provide the main vegetable that becomes crisp-tender and tangy after pickling.
Vinegar
Acidifies the onions, preserving them and giving the pickle its sharp flavour.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the vinegar brine.
Whole peppercorns
Contribute pungent, aromatic heat to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Soaking the onions in salt water overnight. Salt draws water out of the onions through osmosis, softening their sharp raw bite and firming their texture so they hold up better in the hot vinegar.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, vinegar):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar. 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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