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Eschalots and Onions

A quick vinegar pickle of onions and eschalots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,226 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Eschalots and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the vinegar, salt, and pepper together and skim off any foam.

  2. Add the onions and simmer for 3-4 minutes until they are clear (2 minutes for eschalots).

  3. Transfer the onions to a jar and cover them once they are cool.

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Vinegar + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Main vegetable; they soften and turn clear as they simmer in the hot vinegar.
Vinegar
Acid that preserves the onions and gives them their sharp, tangy flavour.
Whole white pepper
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer the onions only until clear. Onions cook quickly in hot vinegar. Simmering too long makes them soft and mushy, while stopping as soon as they turn clear keeps a firmer bite.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar. 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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