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Stuffed Spanish Onions with Brown Sauce

Stuffed Spanish onions baked with a breadcrumb and sage filling, topped with butter and served with brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stuffed Spanish Onions with Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Boil the onions for 20 minutes and drain them.

  2. Cut a piece off the top of each onion and scoop out enough inside to leave at least 1 inch thick of the outer part.

Make the stuffing

  1. Chop the removed onion parts finely and mix with the breadcrumbs, sage, pepper, and salt.

  2. Beat the egg, melt 1 oz. of butter, and mix with the breadcrumb mixture.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the onions with the mixture and replace the tops, tying them on with white cotton.

  2. Place the onions in a pie dish or deep tin, add the remaining butter on top, cover, and bake until tender.

  3. Remove the cotton threads and pour brown sauce over the cooked 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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sage + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Spanish onions
Form the edible shell that holds the stuffing and softens when boiled and baked.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb the egg and butter to bind the stuffing and give it body.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumb stuffing so it holds together when baked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, moistening the stuffing and onions as they bake.

The step that matters

Bake until tender, covered. Covering the dish traps steam so the onions cook through evenly; the record gives no baking time, so check for tenderness with a knife rather than relying on the clock.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sage, pepper, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sage, pepper, butter. 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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