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Pickled Onions

Pickled onions soaked in brine, layered with spices, then covered with boiled vinegar and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the outer skins from the onions until they are clean and white.

  2. Soak the onions in brine for three days, then drain them.

Pack and pickle

  1. In a jar, layer the onions three inches deep, sprinkling with horse‑radish, cinnamon bark, cloves, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Use ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper, 2 teaspoons chopped horse‑radish, 2 teaspoons cloves, and 4 tablespoons cinnamon bark for every gallon of pickles.

  3. Bring vinegar to a boil and add brown sugar at a ratio of 1 quart to 1 gallon.

  4. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the onions.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Radish + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Radish + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together508 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Small silver-skinned onions
Form the main body of the pickle, becoming tender and translucent as they absorb the brine.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the onions and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a mellow sweetness.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice that penetrates the onions during pickling.

The step that matters

Soaking the onions in brine for three days. The brine draws water out of the onions and seasons them before pickling; skipping or shortening this soak leaves them watery and less firm once the hot vinegar is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, horse, radish, cinnamon, clove, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, horse, radish, cinnamon, clove, pepper, 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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