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Stewed Onion

A simple stew of peeled onions simmered in stock or gravy, finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Stewed Onion

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the onions, keeping the tops and tails intact.

Cook

  1. Place the onions in a large saucepan and add the stock or gravy.

  2. Simmer gently until the onions are tender.

  3. Add the butter just before serving.

  4. Serve very hot.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Provide the main body and sweetness as they soften and release their sugars during gentle simmering.
Stock or gravy
Supplies liquid that cooks the onions gently and carries savory flavour into the finished dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the cooking liquid when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the onions are tender. Gentle heat softens the onions evenly without breaking them apart. Boiling vigorously can make the outer layers mushy before the centres are cooked through.

“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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