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Pickled Onions

Pickled onions preserved in brine, vinegar, mace, peppercorns, and sugar, stored for six weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. Peel the onions and soak them in brine for three days.

  2. Drain the onions and cover them with fresh, scalding hot brine for another three days.

  3. Bring the brine and onions to a boil.

  4. Remove the onions with a slotted spoon and drop them into fresh cold water.

  5. Soak the onions in cold water for 24 hours, changing the water once.

Pickle and store

  1. Drain the onions again and pack them into pint jars.

  2. Cover the onions with boiling vinegar spiced with mace, white peppercorns, and sugar.

  3. Let the jars stand in a dark place for six weeks before using.

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. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  4. Vinegar + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,415 recipes
  5. Mace + sugartop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,096 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Silver skin onions
Their firm flesh holds its crunch through the long brining and pickling.
Brine
Salt draws water out of the onions and seasons them, softening their sharp bite.
Boiling vinegar
Its acidity preserves the onions and gives the pickle its tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Soaking in cold water after the hot brine. Draining and soaking in fresh cold water rinses off excess salt so the onions do not taste overly salty. Changing the water helps remove the salt that has soaked into them.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, sugar. 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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