Skip to main content
Main

Onion Pickle

A pickled onion dish preserved in vinegar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Onion Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions until they look white.

  2. Boil strong salt water and pour it over the onions; let them stand for 24 hours, covered to retain steam.

  3. Wash the onions in two cold waters.

  4. Scald the onions in hot water, then drop them in cold water, and wash again in another water.

  5. Wipe the onions dry and pack them in a jar.

Pickle

  1. Pour boiling vinegar over the onions, adding cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and sugar to taste, ensuring the onions are well covered with vinegar.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

White onions
Form the body of the pickle, becoming tender and mild as they are brined and soaked.
Strong salt water
Draws moisture out of the onions and seasons them during the long standing period.
Boiling vinegar
Acidity that preserves the onions and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Covering the onions with vinegar. Onions left exposed to air can spoil, and vinegar only preserves where it fully covers them. Keeping every piece submerged keeps the pickle safe and even in flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, clove, allspice, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove, allspice, cinnamon, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes