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Small Pickled Onions

Pickled onions are small onions preserved in a vinegar and spice brine.

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 ↓

Small Pickled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the small round onions and place them in a pot.

  2. Boil the onions in a mixture of milk and water with salt until they look clear.

  3. Remove the onions and lay them on a cloth to cool.

Pickle and store

  1. Once cooled, place the onions in a jar or glass bottle.

  2. In a separate pot, boil the vinegar with horseradish, ginger, and white pepper.

  3. Let the vinegar mixture cool slightly, then pour it over the onions.

  4. Cover the jar tightly with a lid or cloth.

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. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Horseradish + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together676 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Small round onions
Provide the main body and crisp-tender texture of the pickle.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and preserves the onions in the brine.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the onions and draws out moisture during the initial boil.
Milk
Mellows the onions' sharp flavour during the initial boil.

The step that matters

Let the vinegar mixture cool slightly before pouring. Pouring boiling vinegar over the onions can soften them too much and cook them further. Letting it cool slightly keeps the onions firmer while the acid still penetrates them.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, milk, white wine, vinegar, horseradish, ginger. 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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