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Onions

Onions preserved in a hot pickle of horseradish, allspice, black pepper, and salt in white wine vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 654 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Trim the tops off the onions.

  2. Boil water in a stew-pan and add enough onions to cover the top.

  3. Once the onions look clear, remove them with a slotted spoon and place them on a cloth.

  4. Cover the onions with another cloth until dry.

Pickle and seal

  1. Put the dried onions into jars and cover them with hot pickle made by infusing horseradish, allspice, black pepper, and salt in white wine vinegar for three days.

  2. Seal the jars tightly and cover with a bladder wetted with the pickle.

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. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Small round clear button onions
Provide the crisp, mild main body of the pickle that absorbs the vinegar flavour.
White wine vinegar
Acts as the pickling liquid, adding acidity that preserves and sharpens the onions.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent aroma and heat that infuses into the vinegar.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the infused pickle.
Black pepper
Adds mild pungency and spice to the infused pickle.

The step that matters

Blanching the onions until just clear. Boiling briefly softens the onion and drives off some moisture and raw sharpness so the onions take up the pickle evenly. Overcooking turns them soft and mushy, while under-blanching leaves them harsh and less receptive to the vinegar.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, allspice, pepper, 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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