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Stuffed Onions

Stuffed onions filled with minced beef, breadcrumbs, parsley, and butter, simmered in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stuffed Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Scoop out the hearts of the onions and mince them very small.

  2. Mince the beef and mix it with the minced onion, breadcrumbs, parsley, butter, salt, cayenne, and egg.

  3. Stuff the mixture into the hollowed onions.

Stew and serve

  1. Place the onions in a saucepan with the gravy and stew for three hours.

  2. Thicken the sauce with a little flour and butter, adding more salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Serve very hot with gravy poured around the onions.

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 + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Hollowed to hold the filling, and their softened flesh sweetens the gravy as they stew.
Beef
Provides the savoury meaty body of the stuffing.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb juices and help the filling hold together and stay moist.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds its shape when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the filling.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.

The step that matters

Stewing the stuffed onions. A long, gentle stew lets the onions turn tender and sweet while the filling cooks through. Too fast a simmer can toughen the beef and dry the stuffing, so keep the liquid barely bubbling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, butter, egg, flour):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, butter, egg, flour. 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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