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Stewed Onions

Stewed onions stuffed with meat, parsley, eschalot, and mushrooms, simmered in white stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Stewed Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions and cut off the tops and bottoms without breaking them.

  2. Blanch the onions in boiling water for 20 minutes, then drain.

Stuff and stew

  1. Remove the center of each onion and fill with a mixture of fine meat, chopped parsley, eschalot, and button mushrooms.

  2. Butter the outside of the onions and place them in a stew pan with white stock.

  3. Simmer gently over low heat, turning occasionally, until tender and glazed.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  5. Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Form the edible shell that holds the filling and turns tender and sweet when stewed.
Fine meat
Forms the savory filling that cooks through inside the onion shell.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the outside of the onions take on a glaze.
White stock
Provides liquid for gentle stewing and adds savory flavor to the onions.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Simmer gently over low heat. Too much heat boils the liquid hard and can break the onions apart or toughen the filling. Gentle simmering lets the onion soften evenly while the meat cooks through and the butter glazes the surface.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, meat, mushroom, 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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