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Bleaching the Onions

Onions are blanched, drained, and sautéed in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Bleaching the Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and cut onions in half, removing the hard root and thin stalk ends.

  2. Slice the onions thinly and set them in a casserole with boiling water.

  3. Add salt to the water to cover the onions and prevent bitterness.

  4. Boil for 8 minutes, then drain in a colander and rinse with cold water.

  5. Spread onions on a dry cloth to remove excess water.

Cook in butter

  1. Melt butter in a low casserole or frying pan over moderate heat.

  2. Add onions and stir with a wooden spoon for 4-5 minutes to evaporate moisture.

  3. Cover and let onions simmer slowly in the butter, stirring occasionally.

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 + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Form the dish itself; slow cooking in butter softens them and builds their sweetness.
Butter
Carries the heat and adds richness, letting the onions soften gently without browning.
Sea salt
Seasons the boiling water, which the record says helps prevent bitterness in the onions.

The step that matters

Drying the onions before cooking. Excess water left on the onions would steam them in the butter instead of letting moisture evaporate, so they soften less evenly. Stirring over heat until the moisture is gone helps them cook down properly.

“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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