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Scalloped Onions

Scalloped onions are onions cooked in butter, milk, and breadcrumbs, then baked until browned.

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

Why it works: Butter and bread 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Remove the skins from the onions and rinse them in cold water.

  2. Cut the onions in half round ways.

  3. Boil the onions in salted water until tender, then drain them.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a pudding dish, layer bread crumbs, then onions, seasoning each layer with salt, pepper, and butter.

  2. Moisten the layers with milk and bake in the oven until browned.

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. Butter + breadtop 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
Become tender and sweet as the main body of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Absorb milk and butter, forming a soft layer that holds the dish together.
Milk
Moistens the layers so they cook through and turn creamy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Boiling the onions until tender. Onions cooked only partly stay firm and sharp, and raw centres will not soften in the oven. Boiling them fully until tender gives them a mild, soft texture before baking.

Swap the onion

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

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

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