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Scalloped Onions

Scalloped onions are baked onions with white sauce, bread crumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Scalloped Onions

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 ↓

Scalloped Onions

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the onions

  1. Boil the onions in salted water, changing the water twice.

  2. Drain and cut the onions in halves if they are large.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the onions in a baking dish and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Pour white sauce over the onions.

  3. Cover with bread crumbs and place bits of butter on top.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 and soften into a tender, sweet filling.
White sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess that keeps the onions from drying out in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns during baking.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the crumb topping brown and adds richness.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking at 400°F melts the butter and browns the crumbs; pulling the dish too early leaves a pale, soggy topping over a wet filling.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sauce, bread, 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.

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