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This is a pickled onion recipe using milk, water, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Place onions in boiling water for a few minutes.

  2. Drain the onions.

  3. Peel the onions.

  4. Soak the peeled onions in milk, water, and salt until boiling.

  5. Strain the onions.

  6. Dry the onions.

Pickle and seal

  1. Place the onions in wide-mouthed bottles.

  2. Boil cold white wine vinegar with whole white pepper, ginger, mace, and horseradish.

  3. Pour the hot vinegar over the onions.

  4. Seal the bottles tightly.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Ginger + macetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  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

Small button onions
The main ingredient, which becomes tender and absorbs the pickling liquid.
Cold white-wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the onions.
Milk
Softens the onions and mellows their sharp flavour during the soak.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, milk, wine, vinegar, ginger, mace, horseradish):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, milk, wine, vinegar, ginger, mace, 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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