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Onions, Stuffed

Onions stuffed with sausage, baked in butter until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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, Stuffed

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the onions

  1. Choose onions of similar size and peel them.

  2. Blanch the onions in boiling salted water for 15 minutes.

  3. Drain the onions and place them upside down on a cloth.

  4. Scoop out the centers of the onions with a spoon.

Stuff and bake

  1. Fill the cavities with sausage meat.

  2. Melt the butter in a baking dish and arrange the onions side by side.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until nicely browned, basting occasionally with the melted butter.

  4. If available, brush the tops with a little liquid glaze before serving.

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).

  2. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Hold the filling and soften as they cook, becoming sweet and tender as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the onions brown as they are basted.
Sausage meat
Forms the savory filling that cooks inside each onion cavity.

The step that matters

Blanching the onions. Blanching in boiling salted water softens the onion layers so they bend and cook through. Skipping or shortening it can leave the onions firm and undercooked in the center while the outside browns.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, meat. 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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