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To Boil Onions

A simple boiled onion dish simmered in water and served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

To Boil Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the tops and tails of the onions and peel off the thin outer skin.

  2. Place the onions in a broad pan without stacking them.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover the onions with water and simmer slowly until tender but not breaking.

  2. Serve with melted butter.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Provide the main body and sweet, mild flavour once softened by simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour when served melted over the onions.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly until tender but not breaking. A gentle simmer cooks the onions through evenly while keeping their layers intact. A hard boil can make the outer layers break apart before the centre softens.

“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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