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Stuffed Onions

A dish of boiled onions filled with a meat and breadcrumb mixture, simmered in stock and served with a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffed Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions and place them in a saucepan of boiling water.

  2. Boil until soft enough to remove the middle part; small onions take about 1 hour, large ones 1.5 to 2 hours.

Make the filling

  1. Mince the cooked meat, ham, bacon, or fowl together.

  2. Add the bread crumbs, seasoning, and chopped onion pieces.

  3. Bind the mixture with a little milk or stock.

  4. Fill the onion shells with the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Place them in the saucepan and pour in enough hot stock to half cover them.

  2. Simmer for a little more than half an hour.

  3. Once cooked, remove the onions and place them on a dish.

  4. Thicken the gravy with 2 teaspoons of flour mixed with a little cold water and browning.

  5. Pour the gravy around the onions and serve.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions (in the method)
Form the edible shells that hold the filling and soften during boiling.
Meat remnants
Provide the savory body of the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help bind the filling so it holds together.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the gravy so it coats the onions instead of running off.

The step that matters

Remove the middle part of the onions while they are soft. Onions must be cooked enough to scoop out without tearing, but not so long that the shells collapse. Undercooked shells crack when cut, and overcooked ones lose their shape and hold less filling.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, bread, milk. 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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