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Stuffed Onions

A dish of boiled onions filled with ham, bread crumbs, nuts, and spices, then baked with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stuffed Onions

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Boil the onions until tender.

  2. Remove the centers and chop them.

  3. Mix the chopped centers with the ham, bread crumbs, nut meats, salt, and pepper.

  4. Stuff the onion shells with the mixture.

Bake

  1. Place a small piece of butter on top of each stuffed onion.

  2. Bake for 25 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Form the edible shells that hold the stuffing and soften when boiled.
Boiled ham
Adds savory, meaty flavor and some chew to the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the chopped onion and ham into a stuffing.
Nut meats
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavor to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the tops brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Boil the onions until tender. Onions must be fully softened before stuffing, because raw or firm onion shells stay tough and will not cook through in the time given for baking.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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