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Onion Pickle

A pickled onion dish made with onions, sugar, vinegar, spices, and alum water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Onion Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Pour hot salt water over the onions and let them stand until cold.

  2. Skin the onions and scald them for a few minutes in weak alum water.

Make the pickle

  1. In a kettle, combine sugar and vinegar, and add spices to taste.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Tie up the onions closely while 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.

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 + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Onion + sugartop 36% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Onion and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,747 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

Small white onions
The main vegetable, which is pickled and becomes the finished dish itself.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the onions.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Alum
Helps firm the onions so they keep a crisper texture after scalding.
Spices
Add aroma and flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Scalding the onions in alum water. Scalding only a few minutes is enough. Longer heat softens the onion tissue, and the alum can only firm it so much, so the pickle turns limp.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar. 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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