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Stuffed Onions

Stuffed onions with a creamy bacon and breadcrumb filling, baked and served with a lemon‑cream gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stuffed Onions

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the onions

  1. Wash and peel the onions.

  2. Soak the onions in cold water for 1 hour.

  3. Parboil the onions in boiling water for 30 minutes.

  4. Drain the onions.

  5. While hot, carefully remove the hearts of the onions without breaking the outer layers.

  6. Finely chop the onion hearts.

Make the stuffing

  1. Mix the chopped hearts with a little cold bacon, bread crumbs, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of cream to the mixture.

  3. Bind the mixture with a beaten egg to form a smooth paste.

  4. Stuff the onions with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the stuffed onions in a baking dish with a little hot water.

  2. Simmer in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1 hour.

  3. Baste often with melted butter.

  4. Carefully place the onions in a serving dish with the open ends facing up.

  5. In the dripping pan, combine the remaining gravy with the juice of ½ lemon, 4 tablespoons of cream or milk, and a little browned flour mixed with cold water.

  6. Boil the mixture once.

  7. Pour the mixture over the stuffed onions.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Very large onions
Their outer layers form the shell that holds the stuffing and cooks until tender.
Egg
Binds the chopped stuffing into a paste that holds its shape when baked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body and texture.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing and the sauce.
Browned flour
Thickens the pan gravy so it coats the onions.

The step that matters

Removing the onion hearts. Hearts must be removed while the onions are hot and parboiled, because the layers soften and become flexible. Pulling the hearts out cold risks tearing the outer layers, which would leave the stuffing with no shell to hold it.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, cream, egg, butter, lemon, flour):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, cream, egg, butter, lemon, flour. 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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