Skip to main content
Main

Fried Onions

Thin slices of onion coated in flour and deep‑fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 32,460 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the onions and slice them into thin, even slices.

  2. Separate the rings and season with salt and white pepper.

  3. Roll the onion rings gently in flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat deep frying fat and plunge the coated rings into it.

  2. Fry until golden brown, about 5 minutes.

  3. Drain the fried onions, season again, and 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. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. White pepper + flourtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Spanish onions
Provide the main body and sweetness that becomes tender and caramelised when fried.
Flour
Forms a light coating that crisps during frying and helps the rings brown evenly.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. Frying at the right heat and stopping at golden brown keeps the coating crisp and the onion tender. Too little heat makes the rings greasy and soft, while too much browns the outside before the inside cooks.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, flour. 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.

More fried onions recipes

Parmesan 3 See all 72 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes