Skip to main content
Main

Roasted Onions

Roasted onions stuffed with pork, bacon, bread crumbs, and spices, baked and served with a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roasted Onions

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the onions

  1. Wash and peel the onions.

  2. Soak the onions in cold water for 1 hour.

  3. Par-boil the onions in boiling water for 30 minutes.

  4. Drain the onions.

  5. While hot, remove the hearts of the onions without breaking the outer layers.

  6. Chop the hearts finely.

Make the stuffing

  1. Mix the chopped hearts with a little cold fat pork or bacon, bread crumbs, pepper, coarse sea salt, mace, and 1–2 tablespoons of cream.

  2. Bind the mixture with 1 beaten egg to form a smooth paste.

  3. Stuff the onions with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the stuffed onions in a dripping pan with a little hot water.

  2. Simmer in a 350 °F (175 °C) oven for 1 hour, basting often with melted butter.

  3. Once done, carefully arrange the onions with the open ends up in a serving dish.

  4. Add the gravy from the dripping pan, the juice of ½ lemon, 4 tablespoons of cream or milk, and a little browned flour mixed with cold milk.

  5. Boil the sauce once and pour it over the 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Very large bermuda onions
Form the edible shell that holds the stuffing and softens during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body so it holds together.
Egg
Binds the stuffing into a cohesive paste as it sets.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the stuffing and the sauce.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy sauce that is poured over the onions.
Melted butter
Adds fat and browning to the onions while they bake.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce once and pour it over the onions. Boiling thickens the flour-based sauce and cooks out raw flour taste, while pouring it on hot keeps the onions warm and the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pork, bread, pepper, cream, egg, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pork, bread, pepper, cream, egg, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes