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Onions

This dish is boiled onions mashed with butter, pepper, salt, and milk, or fried sliced onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the onions

  1. Boil large onions in salted water for 1 hour or Portugal onions for 2 hours.

  2. For milder onions, drain and replace the boiling water halfway through.

Mash the onions

  1. Once cooked, drain and mash with butter, pepper, salt, and milk.

Fry the onions

  1. For fried onions, slice them thickly and boil in water and salt for 3-4 minutes.

  2. Drain, add 2 tablespoons of butter, a dusting of flour, and fry until brown on both sides.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Main ingredient; long boiling softens them and mellows their sharp flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the fried onions brown.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess to the mashed onions.
Flour (in the method)
A light dusting helps the fried onions form a browned crust.

The step that matters

Drain before frying. Boiled onions must be drained well before frying. Surface water turns to steam in the pan, which stops browning and makes the onions soggy instead of golden.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, milk. 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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