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Boiled Onions

Boiled onions are onions simmered in water, seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and optionally milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the tops and tails of the onions and peel them.

  2. Soak the onions in cold water for 30 minutes to avoid eye irritation.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the onions in a porcelain kettle with enough water to cover them for 15 minutes.

  2. Drain the water and refill with boiling water from the kettle.

  3. If using milk, add 1 quart to the boiling water 30 minutes before the onions are done.

  4. Season the boiled onions with salt, pepper, and butter, or serve with drawn butter gravy or cream gravy.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Form the main body of the dish, softening as they cook until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour when seasoning the cooked onions.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the cooking liquid, if used.

The step that matters

Soak the onions in cold water. Soaking before peeling and cutting helps reduce the sulfur compounds released when onion cells are broken, which otherwise irritate the eyes.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, milk. 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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