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White Onion Pickle

A pickled condiment made from small white onions, mustard seed, horseradish, and white wine vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

White Onion Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the small white onions.

  2. Boil the onions in water until they reach the boiling point, then drain.

Pack and seal

  1. Place the onions in glass jars.

  2. Add mustard seed and grated horseradish to the jars.

  3. Cover the onions with hot white wine vinegar and seal the jars.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Very small white onions
Main vegetable, providing the body and mild sweetness of the pickle.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that infuses into the vinegar.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, hot aroma and bite.
White wine vinegar
Its acidity sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the onions.

The step that matters

Covering the onions with hot vinegar and sealing the jars. The onions must be fully submerged so no part is exposed to air, where spoilage can start. The acid in the vinegar preserves them and carries the flavour of the spices into the onions.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, horseradish, white wine, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, horseradish, white wine, 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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