Name: Pickled Onions
Ingredients: 1 peck silver skin onions; 1 cup coarse sea salt; 8 tablespoons whole spices; sharp cold vinegar

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 ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

1 peck silver skin onions
1 cup coarse sea salt
8 tablespoons whole spices
sharp cold vinegar

Directions

Prepare

Skin the onions and sprinkle salt over them, then leave for 2 hours.
Pour off the brine.

Pickle and store

Pack the onions in bottles.
Pour on sharp cold vinegar and add whole spices.
Seal the bottles and store for a few weeks before using.

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.

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

Silver skin onions: Form the bulk of the pickle and give it a firm, crisp bite.
Coarse sea salt: Draws water out of the onions, firming them before they are pickled.
Sharp cold vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the onions.
Whole spices: Infuse the vinegar and onions with aromatic flavour.

“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.