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To Pickle Onions

A method for pickling small onions in vinegar with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pickle Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Cover the onions with spring water and add the salt.

  2. Boil until the water simmers.

  3. Strain the onions and remove three layers of skin.

  4. Dry them thoroughly with a cloth.

Pack and pickle

  1. Place the onions in bottles with the cloves, nutmeg pieces, and mace.

  2. Boil the vinegar with a little salt, then let it cool.

  3. Pour it over the onions.

  4. Cork the bottles tightly.

  5. Cover with bladder and leather.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Onion + white winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,535 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Small onions
Form the bulk of the pickle and take on the flavour of the vinegar.
White wine vinegar
Its acidity preserves the onions and gives them their sharp taste.
Cloves
Add a warm, spicy aroma to the pickling liquid.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, sweet aroma to the pickling liquid.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Dry the onions thoroughly before packing. Any water left on the onions dilutes the vinegar when it is poured over them. A weaker vinegar gives less acidity to preserve the onions, so drying them well helps the pickle keep and keeps its sharp flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, vinegar, clove, nutmeg, mace):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, clove, nutmeg, mace. 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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