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Pickled Onions

Onions pickled in a vinegar brine with peppercorns, allspice, ginger, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Brine

  1. Place unpeeled onions in a pan with ½ cup coarse sea salt and enough water to cover.

  2. Let sit for 24 hours.

  3. Peel the onions one at a time, placing them in fresh saltwater.

  4. Change the saltwater every morning and night for 2 days.

  5. After 2 days, remove the onions from the brine and dry them with a cloth.

Make the pickle

  1. Prepare the pickle by combining 1 quart of distilled vinegar with black peppercorns, allspice, sliced ginger, and horseradish in a stoneware jar.

  2. Let the mixture steep, covered, by the fire for 3 days while the onions are in saltwater.

Pack and serve

  1. After steeping, place the dried onions into stoneware jars or bottles and pour the pickle over them.

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. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Ginger + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together676 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Are the main vegetable being preserved and become tender and mild during brining.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the onions and seasons them during the brine.
Distilled vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the onions and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Black peppercorns
Adds warm, sharp aroma to the pickling liquid as it steeps.
Ginger
Adds bright, spicy aroma to the pickling liquid.
Horseradish
Adds pungent heat that mellows as the pickle steeps.

The step that matters

Drying the onions after brining. Onions left wet from the saltwater dilute the vinegar pickle and weaken its preserving effect. Drying them well before packing helps the pickle keep its strength and flavour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, allspice, ginger, horseradish. 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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