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To Pickle Onions

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,595 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Pickle Onions

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel the smallest onions you can find.

  2. Soak the onions in salt and water for 2-3 days, changing the water daily.

  3. Place the onions in jars and pour boiling salt and water over them 2-3 times.

  4. Boil the vinegar with ginger, white pepper, and mace.

  5. Once the vinegar is cold, pour it over the onions.

  6. If desired, add bay leaves and a spoonful of oil to each jar.

  7. Seal the jars with bladders.

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

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

  2. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Ginger + macetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

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

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Ginger + white peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, ginger, mace. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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