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Onions

A simple boiled onion dish, simmered until tender and tossed with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and butter 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 ↓

Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Parboil

  1. Boil the onions in plenty of water with salt for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the first water.

  3. Add fresh water.

Simmer until tender

  1. Boil slowly for 3 hours until tender enough to pierce with a straw.

  2. Drain the water.

Finish and serve

  1. Add butter to the saucepan.

  2. Toss the onions in it over the heat for 5 minutes.

  3. Serve with or without butter, based on preference.

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 + buttertop 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
Soften over long cooking, becoming tender and mellow, and form the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth coating that carries flavour across the onions.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 3 hours. A gentle simmer lets the onions soften evenly through to the centre without breaking apart or drying out. A hard boil can ruin their shape and texture. Test tenderness with a straw before draining.

“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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