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Portugal Onions

A pickled mixture of onions and apples in boiling vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,226 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Portugal Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the onion and baking apple into small pieces.

  2. Mix the onion and apple pieces together.

Pickle

  1. Place the mixture into a pickle jar.

  2. Pour enough boiling vinegar over the mixture to cover it and fill the jar.

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Apple + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,884 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Onion + appletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,206 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

Onion
Supplies sharp, pungent flavour that mellows as it soaks in the vinegar.
Baking apple
Its firm flesh holds its shape in the brine and its natural sweetness balances the sharpness.
Vinegar
Its acidity sharpens the flavour and gradually softens and preserves the pieces.

The step that matters

Pour enough boiling vinegar to cover the mixture. Pieces left above the liquid stay unpickled and can dry out or spoil at the surface. Fully submerged pieces pickle evenly and keep better.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, 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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