Skip to main content
Main

Onion Sandwiches

A sandwich made with sliced Spanish onion, salt, sugar, French dressing, and buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,676 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Onion Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the onion

  1. Slice the Spanish onion and sprinkle with coarse sea salt and sugar.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

  3. Chop the onion very fine.

Assemble the sandwich

  1. Mix the chopped onion with French dressing.

  2. Spread the mixture on thin slices of buttered bread.

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

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

  2. Sugar + breadtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

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

  3. Onion + sugartop 36% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Onion and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,747 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

Spanish onion
Supplies the sharp, pungent flavor that the salting and resting mellows.
Sugar
Balances the salt and the onion's sharpness with mild sweetness.
French dressing
Adds moisture, tang and seasoning that bind the chopped onion into a spread.
Bread
Provides a buttered base that holds the spread and carries its flavor.

The step that matters

Salting and standing the onion. Salt draws water out of the onion's cells over the long rest, softening its bite and concentrating flavor. Shortening or skipping the 24-hour rest leaves the onion harsher and gives the spread a different texture once dressing is added.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes