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Smothered Onions

Smothered onions are onions cooked slowly in butter until lightly colored.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Smothered Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and halve the onions, then slice them finely.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the sliced onions and butter.

Cook

  1. Cover the saucepan and simmer on low heat, stirring occasionally.

  2. Once lightly colored, drain off the butter and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Provide the main body and sweetness as they soften and slowly caramelize over low heat.
Butter
Adds fat that carries heat evenly so the onions soften and color gently without scorching.

The step that matters

Simmering covered on low heat. Low, covered heat softens the onions in their own moisture and butter. Too much heat or too little covering can scorch them before they turn golden, so stirring occasionally matters.

“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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