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Potatoes and Onions

A layered dish of boiled potatoes and onions, seasoned with ham gravy or butter, vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potatoes and Onions

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil potatoes in their skins, then peel while hot and slice.

  2. Slice onions and soak them in salt water for about an hour.

  3. Heat ham gravy or butter with a little water in a skillet and cook the onions slightly.

Assemble and serve

  1. Layer the onions and potatoes in a vegetable dish, finishing with a layer of potatoes.

  2. Add vinegar to the skillet, warm it, and pour over the layered vegetables.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Onion + hamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Potato + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,608 recipes

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

  5. Ham + vinegartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish, giving soft, starchy layers that absorb the warm dressing.
Onions
Add sharp, sweet flavour, which softens and mellows when gently cooked.
Ham gravy or butter
Adds fat and savoury richness, carrying flavour through the onions and potatoes.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the richness of the fat.

The step that matters

Soaking the onions in salt water. Soaking draws out some of the sharp sulfur compounds in raw onions, making them milder. Skipping or shortening it leaves the onions harsher in the finished dish.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, ham, 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.

More potatoes and onions recipes

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