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Pickled Onions

Pickled onions are preserved in vinegar with pickling spice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,226 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the onions carefully and soak them in saltwater until finished.

  2. Drain the water and place the onions into dry, wide-mouthed bottles.

Pickle

  1. Boil the pickling spice in some vinegar.

  2. Once the spice mixture is nearly cold, pour a little into each bottle and fill the bottles with vinegar.

Seal and rest

  1. Cover the bottles with paper and seal them airtight.

  2. Let them sit for one month before using.

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 + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Malt + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together365 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Onion + malttop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Silver-skinned onions
The main vegetable, which softens and takes on the flavor of the pickling liquid over time.
Malt vinegar
Provides the acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the onions.
Pickling spice
Adds the aromatic, savory flavors that infuse the vinegar and onions.

The step that matters

Let the spice mixture cool before pouring it into the bottles. Pouring hot spiced vinegar over the onions would partly cook them, softening their texture and dulling the crisp bite that pickled onions are known for.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (malt, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against malt, vinegar. 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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