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To Stew Spanish Onions

A stew of peeled Spanish onions cooked slowly with butter, salt, soy sauce, and mushroom ketchup, finished with a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Stew Spanish Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the onions and place them in a stewpan with the butter and salt.

Stew the onions

  1. Set the stewpan by the fire and let the onions stew very gently for three hours.

  2. When the underside is brown, carefully turn the onions.

  3. Once cooked, transfer the onions to a serving dish.

Finish the gravy

  1. Remove excess fat from the gravy, then add the soy sauce and mushroom ketchup.

  2. Thicken the gravy and pour it over the onions.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Spanish onions
Become tender and sweet as they stew slowly, forming the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the onions brown and gives the gravy richness.
Soy sauce
Adds savoury depth and colour to the gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stewing very gently. Low, slow heat lets the onions soften and sweeten without scorching. Too much heat can burn the butter and sugars before the onions become tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, mushroom, ketchup. 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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