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Pickled Onions

Pickled onions are small onions preserved in a brine of salt, water, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 small onions and place them in a large bowl.

  2. Add 1 cup of coarse sea salt and pour enough boiling water to cover the onions.

Brine and pickle

  1. Let the onions stand overnight, then drain and repeat the process the next night.

  2. After the second night, cover the onions with cold sharp vinegar and add whole spices.

  3. Let the onions sit for one week 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).

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

What each ingredient does

Small onions
Provide the main body of the pickle, becoming tender and mild as they cure.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the onions through osmosis, firming them and seasoning them for pickling.
Sharp vinegar
Acidifies the onions, preserving them and giving them their tangy flavour.

The step that matters

Draining and repeating the salt brine. Salt draws moisture out of the onions and softens their sharp flavour. Skipping the drain or the second brining leaves too much water and bite, which dilutes the vinegar and weakens the pickle.

“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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