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Pickled Onions

Pickled onions preserved in a brine of salt, water, alum, and vinegar with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Brine

  1. Peel the onions and cover them with brine made from ½ pound salt dissolved in 1 gallon of boiling water.

  2. Let the onions stand for 24 hours.

Alum soak

  1. Drain the onions and cover them with boiling water mixed with 1 teaspoon of alum.

  2. Let them stand for several hours, then drain off the water.

Pickle and jar

  1. Pack the onions into jars and cover them with boiling vinegar spiced with whole black pepper, allspice, and cinnamon to taste.

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Onion + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Small white onions
Form the bulk of the pickle and absorb the brine and vinegar flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the onions during the brine, firming them and seasoning them.
Alum
Firms the onion tissue so it stays crisp after pickling.
Boiling vinegar
Acidity that preserves the onions and gives them their sharp, tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Draining after the alum soak. Alum firms the onions only when they are fully soaked and the excess water is poured off, so the vinegar does not dilute and the texture stays firm and crisp.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, allspice, 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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