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Spanish Onions Stewed

A stew of Spanish onions cooked slowly with butter or dripping, salt, and pepper.

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 Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Boil the whole onions in salted water for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the onions and return them to a pot.

Stew

  1. Add a small piece of butter or dripping, and a little pepper and salt.

  2. Cover the pot tightly to retain steam and simmer gently for 2 to 3 hours, depending on size and quality.

  3. Baste occasionally with the cooking liquid to prevent burning.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 cook slowly in their own steam and liquid.
Butter or dripping
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the slow stew.

The step that matters

Simmer gently under a tight cover. Gentle heat and a sealed pot keep moisture in and cook the onions evenly. Boiling hard or letting the liquid evaporate can scorch the bottom and toughen the layers before they soften.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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