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Pickled Onions

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put the desired quantity of small onions into hot water and peel them.

  2. Soak the peeled onions in fresh salted water with a small piece of alum until the next day.

  3. Drain the water, cover the onions with fresh salted water and alum, and leave for another day.

  4. Drain again and place the onions in jars with mace, chillies, white peppercorns, and horseradish.

  5. Pour enough vinegar to cover the onions, cork the jars, cover with parchment, tie down, and store in a dry cupboard.

  6. The onions will be ready to eat in a month.

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 + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Mace + horseradishtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together867 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, horseradish, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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