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Spanish Onions, Boiled

Boiled Spanish onions served with white sauce and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Spanish Onions, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the onions and place them in a saucepan large enough to hold them side by side.

  2. Cover the onions with cold water and bring to a boil.

  3. Strain the onions and rinse them in cold water.

Boil

  1. Put the onions into a saucepan of boiling salted water (2 teaspoons of salt per quart).

  2. Boil gently until tender, about 1.5 to 2 hours.

  3. Drain the onions well.

Serve

  1. Place the onions in a hot vegetable dish.

  2. Pour the white sauce over the onions.

  3. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

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

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

  2. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + parsleytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Onion and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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

Spanish onions
Gentle boiling softens the dense layers until they become tender and easy to cut.
White sauce
Adds creamy moisture and richness that coats the soft onions.

The step that matters

Boil gently until tender. A gentle simmer softens the onions evenly without breaking them apart. Vigorous boiling can make the outer layers fall apart before the centre is tender.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cuminfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, sauce. 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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