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Pickled Onions

Pickled onions prepared by boiling in milk and water, then brined in vinegar, mace, cloves, salt, alum, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and boil the small onions in milk and water for 10 minutes.

  2. Drain the onions, then pour boiling water over them and drain again.

Pickle and seal

  1. In a large pot, combine vinegar, mace, cloves, salt, and alum.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and pour it over the onions.

  3. Seal the onions in jars or crocks airtight.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the onions and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Milk
Mellows the onions' sharpness during the initial boil, leaving them milder and paler.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the onions and seasons the pickling liquid.
Alum
Helps the onions stay firm and crisp rather than going soft during pickling.

The step that matters

Sealing the onions airtight. Pickled onions are preserved by acidity and by excluding air. If the jars or crocks are not sealed airtight, air and microbes can spoil the onions, so the seal must be complete.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, vinegar, mace, clove, pepper, cinnamon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, vinegar, mace, clove, pepper, cinnamon. 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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