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Stewed Onions

A dish of onions stewed in beef or veal gravy, optionally dusted with flour and fried in butter or pork fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Strip the outer skin from the onions and trim the ends without cutting into the vegetable.

  2. If using large onions, boil them in water for 30 minutes, then drain and place in boiling gravy.

Stew

  1. Arrange the onions in a single layer in a saucepan.

  2. For added flavor, lightly dust the onions with flour and fry in butter or salt pork fat until pale brown before stewing.

  3. Cover the onions with gravy and stew gently for 2 hours until tender but not falling apart.

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 + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Portugal onions
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a sweet, tender texture during stewing.
Beef or veal gravy
Supplies moisture and savory flavor while the onions simmer slowly.
Flour
Dusted on the onions before frying to help them take on a pale brown color.

The step that matters

Stewing gently for 2 hours. A gentle simmer lets the onions soften evenly and turn tender without breaking apart. Boiling hard would make the outer layers fall apart before the centre becomes tender.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, 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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