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Pickled Silver Onions

Pickled silver onions preserved in a brine of salt, water, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pickled Silver Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the silver onions and place them in cold water.

  2. Make a brine with enough coarse sea salt in water so that an egg floats.

  3. Bring the brine to a boil and add the onions in small batches.

  4. Boil the onions for five minutes, then skim and place them on a towel to dry.

Pickle and seal

  1. Once cool, place the onions in a glass jar with chopped red pepper, white whole pepper, and horseradish.

  2. Pour cold vinegar over the onions and seal the jar.

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 + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Silver onions
Provide the crisp, mild body that the pickling liquid flavours.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the brine and draws water out of the onions for a firmer texture.
Cold vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Horseradish
Adds a pungent, sharp aroma and heat that infuses into the vinegar.

The step that matters

Boiling the onions for five minutes. Boiling briefly softens the raw bite and sets the surface so the onions stay firm, while over-boiling makes them mushy. Drying them well before jarring keeps excess water from diluting the vinegar.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Cabbagefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, horseradish, vinegar. 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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