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Spanish Onions, Pickled

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Spanish Onions, Pickled

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel the onions and slice them thinly.

  2. Place the sliced onions in a large jar, sprinkling each layer liberally with coarse sea salt and lightly with cayenne pepper.

  3. Cover the onions with vinegar.

  4. Seal the jar to exclude air using a bladder or paper brushed with egg white.

  5. Store in a cool, dry place for 10 to 14 days before using.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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