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Salad

Bermuda Onions Dressed

A salad of sliced Bermuda onions dressed with salt, pepper, sugar, vinegar, and parsley, served on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,483 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Bermuda Onions Dressed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and slice the onions.

  2. Soak the onions in salt water for 2 hours.

  3. Drain and press the onions dry.

Dress and serve

  1. Place the onions in a salad bowl.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt, white pepper, and powdered sugar.

  3. Pour cider vinegar over the onions.

  4. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve on curly lettuce leaves.

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. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  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

Bermuda onions
Provide the main body of the salad, mellowed by soaking and pressing to reduce sharpness.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the onions and the vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the salad its tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Drain and press the onions dry. Onions hold a lot of water and sharp sulfur compounds. Pressing them dry before dressing keeps the salad from becoming watery and dilutes the vinegar, so the seasoning clings and the flavor stays concentrated.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, sugar, cider, vinegar, parsley, lettuce):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, sugar, cider, vinegar, parsley, lettuce. 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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