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Stuffed Onions

A dish of onions filled with bread dressing or forcemeat, baked with salt pork and served with blanched parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stuffed Onions

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the onions

  1. Parboil the onions until slightly tender, then drop them in cold water.

  2. Remove the hearts from the onions and fill them with rich bread dressing or forcemeat.

Bake

  1. Arrange the stuffed onions in a pan and pour in the stock or hot water.

  2. Place a piece of salt pork on top of each onion and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  3. Remove the salt pork before serving and present the dish on a hot platter surrounded by blanched parsley.

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 + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Form the edible shell that holds the dressing and softens as it bakes.
Rich bread dressing or forcemeat
Provides the savory, moist filling that cooks inside the onion.
Stock or hot water
Adds moisture to the pan so the onions steam and bake without drying out.
Salt pork
Slowly renders fat over the onions, adding richness and flavor as it bastes them.

The step that matters

Parboil the onions until slightly tender. Undercooked onions stay firm and bitter-tasting, while overcooked ones tear and collapse. Stopping at slight tenderness lets them finish baking gently while holding their shape around the filling.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, bread, pork):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, bread, pork. 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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