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To Pickle Onions

This recipe preserves small onions in a brine of salt, water, cider vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pickle Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Cut off the stems of the small onions and peel the outer skin.

  2. Soak the onions in a mixture of salt and water for six days, stirring daily and changing the salt and water every two days.

  3. After six days, scald the onions in boiling salt water and let them cool.

  4. Drain the onions on a sieve and wipe them clean.

Pack and seal

  1. Insert a clove into the top of each onion and place them in wide‑mouthed bottles.

  2. Add blades of mace and slices of ginger or nutmeg among the onions.

  3. Fill the bottles with the best cider vinegar and top with a large spoonful of salad oil.

  4. Cork the bottles tightly.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Small onions
Form the pickle itself, becoming tender and firm while absorbing the brine and vinegar flavour.
Salt
Draws water out of the onions during soaking and seasons them throughout.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the onions and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Salad oil
Forms a floating layer on top that limits contact between the onions and the air.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavour that penetrates the onions as they pickle.

The step that matters

Soaking in salt water for six days. The salt brine must be changed every two days and the onions stirred daily, because fresh salt keeps the brine strong enough to draw out moisture and prevent spoilage while the onions slowly ferment and firm up.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, vinegar, clove, mace, ginger):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, clove, mace, ginger. 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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