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Pickled Onions

Pickled onions are onions preserved in a vinegar and sugar brine with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickle

  1. In a pot, combine onions, spices, vinegar, sugar, mustard, salt, and celery seed.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer for 3.5 hours.

Strain and bottle

  1. Press the mixture through a colander, then through a sieve.

  2. Seal the liquid tightly in bottles.

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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Provide the main body of the pickle, softening as they simmer in the liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tart flavour and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that carries through the simmered liquid.

The step that matters

Simmering for 3.5 hours. Long simmering softens the onions and lets their flavour blend with the vinegar and sugar. Too short a simmer leaves the onions firm and the liquid sharp and unblended.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, mustard, celery. 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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