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Another Way to Stew Onions

A stew of onions cooked with meat, bacon, water, pepper, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Another Way to Stew Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the onions.

  2. Roast the onions in a Dutch oven or cheese toaster, turning frequently until well browned.

  3. Transfer the browned onions to a saucepan.

Stew and finish

  1. Add the meat bone, bacon, a little water, and pepper to the saucepan.

  2. Cover the pan and stew until the onions are tender.

  3. Remove the bone and bacon from the pan.

  4. Thicken the sauce with a bit of butter rolled in flour.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Onions
Browning them first builds color and deep flavor, and slow stewing makes them soft and sweet.
Meat bone
Releases savory flavor and gelatin into the water as it stews, enriching the sauce.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that flavors the onions and the stewing liquid.
Butter and flour
Form a roux-style paste that thickens the sauce as it is stirred in.

The step that matters

Roast the onions until well browned. Browning caramelizes the onions' natural sugars and creates deeper, richer flavor. Pale onions give a flat, sweet-only taste and a thinner-looking sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, butter, flour. 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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