Name: Pickled Onions
Ingredients: small white round onions; boiling water; white wine vinegar

Why it works: White wine and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,776 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

small white round onions
boiling water
white wine vinegar

Directions

Peel the brown skin off the onions.
Boil water in a tin stew-pan.
Add enough onions to cover the top and boil until clear.
Remove onions with a slotted spoon and place on a clean cloth.
Cover with another cloth and repeat with more onions.
Let the onions cool.
Place them in a jar or wide-mouth glass bottle.
Pour hot, but not boiling, white wine vinegar over the onions.
Once cooled, cover the jar.

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.

White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,776 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Onion + white winetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,535 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,226 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).