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Scalloped Onions

A baked dish of thinly sliced onions layered with bread crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Scalloped Onions

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Scalloped Onions

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Assemble

  1. Layer half of the sliced onions in a baking dish.

  2. Sprinkle with bread crumbs, butter, pepper, and salt.

  3. Add the remaining onions and repeat the seasoning.

  4. Top with more bread crumbs and moisten with milk.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour or longer until the onions are well cooked.

  2. Serve hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften during baking and become sweet, forming the body of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and form a lightly crisp, browned topping.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the top brown and flavour the onions.
Milk
Moistens the layers so the onions cook through without drying out.

The step that matters

Bake until the onions are well cooked. Thinly sliced onions need long, moist heat to lose their sharpness and turn soft and sweet. Pulling the dish early leaves them firm and sharp-tasting.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, milk. 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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