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Stuffed Spanish Onions

A dish of peeled onions filled with a bread crumb and butter mixture, baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stuffed Spanish Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the onions under water and scoop out a portion from the top center.

  2. Parboil the onions for 5 minutes, then turn them upside down to drain.

Stuff and cook

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped onion from the centers, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and 2 tablespoons of butter.

  2. Fill the onions heaping full with the stuffing and sprinkle the tops with the remaining buttered crumbs.

  3. Place the onions in a pan with 1/4 cup of water, cover, and cook until tender, about 1 hour.

  4. Let them brown slightly before removing from the oven.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Spanish onions
Form the edible shell and provide the sweet, soft cooked body of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and juices from the onion, giving the stuffing a soft, cohesive texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the top crumbs brown during cooking.

The step that matters

Parboil the onions for 5 minutes, then drain them upside down. Parboiling softens the onion layers so they become tender during baking and can be filled without tearing. Draining upside down lets excess water run off, so the stuffing does not turn soggy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, 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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