# Who decided onions go on almost everything? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 7, 2011, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873 "2011-08-07T22:32:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2011, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/82 "2011-08-08T22:49:23Z")
Sign me up for the Anti-Onion side when the Revolution comes, hate the things, and until this thread I thought I was the only one… ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2011, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/83 "2011-08-08T22:57:32Z")
Who decided onions go on almost everything? Probably the same people who decided that practically everything would be improved with the addition of cheese. (FTR, I like onions just fine. Cheese, on the other hand…) ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2011, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/84 "2011-08-08T23:03:12Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > (FTR, I like onions just fine. Cheese, on the other hand…) Obligatory Rutles link: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePaHG6g7uFw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePaHG6g7uFw) ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2011, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/85 "2011-08-08T23:08:46Z")
For a second, I forgot that that wasn’t really a Beatles song. ---
**Author:** ![kath94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/67e7ee/32.png) [@kath94](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kath94)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2011, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/86 "2011-08-08T23:23:08Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > \ And as for garlic, my philosophy is that, if it makes sense to ask the question “Should I put garlic in this?”, then the answer is “yes”. I love you, **Chronos**! I absolutely LOVE garlic but wouldn’t shed a tear if onions disappeared from the face of the earth. Odd, too, 'cause they’re related. > [@california\_jobcase](#): > > Do onion haters like cilantro? Me = hate onions, HATE cilantro. YMMV. > [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Why don’t people just eat salt by itself? My father used to. Peel an onion, salt it, and eat it like an apple. Ick. He also invented his “P.O.T.” sandwich – peanut butter, onion & tomato. Double ick. > [@Jragon](#): > > I like the flavor onions gives to dishes, but hate goddamn onion chunks. A lot of times I’ll take a recipe with onions (i.e. Chicken Noodle Soup), put the onions in, and then remove them during the straining process. Onions themselves are just vile, but onion powder, onion salt, and onion flavoring are good. Yaay **Jragon**! My mother always used to say that she’d chopped the onions up “so small” that I’d never know they were in a dish. NOooo! You’ve got to leave the chunks BIG so I can fish them out! I can tolerate the flavor, but the crunch of onions in any form (Yes, even small enough that I “won’t know they’re there”) just squicks me out. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2011, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/87 "2011-08-08T23:36:13Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > For a second, I forgot that that wasn’t really a Beatles song. From Wikipedia, "George Harrison was involved in the project from the beginning. Producer Gary Weis said “We were sitting around in Eric’s kitchen one day, planning a sequence that really ripped into the mythology and George looked up and said, ‘We were the Beatles, you know!’ Then he shook his head and said ‘Aw, never mind.’ I think he was the only one of the Beatles who really could see the irony of it all.” Harrison later said “…the Rutles sort of liberated me from the Beatles in a way. It was the only thing I saw of those Beatles television shows they made. It was actually the best, funniest and most scathing. But at the same time, it was done with the most love.” Harrison showed Innes and Idle the Beatles unreleased official documentary The Long and Winding Road, made by Neil Aspinall. (Aspinall’s documentary would be resurrected as The Beatles Anthology.)" I like to think of The Rutles as a continuation, not a parody, but that’s another thread. **Ulf** has probably not had a nice cheese and onion sauce on buttered toast. Which I’d make for dinner tomorrow except it’s my wife’s day off and she likes no variation on “shit on a shingle” and thinks I’m being uncooperative when I say that, for dinner, “I like toast.” But I noticed that we both saw that the store had Cinnebon bread and Sunmaid raisin bread on sale. She went with the former, I with the latter. Toasted, with peanut butter. And no cheese nor onions. ---
**Author:** ![chaoticbear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f07891/32.png) [@chaoticbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chaoticbear)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2011, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/88 "2011-08-09T05:43:18Z")
I love 'em in any cooked form. I’m more selective about how I eat them raw, though. Almost any recipe begins with onions (and usually some sort of hot pepper, as well). I’d love to love leeks and shallots as much, but not only are they much more expensive, they’re a pain in the ass to deal with. ---
**Author:** ![Apollon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47774/32.png) [@Apollon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollon)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2011, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/89 "2011-08-09T05:59:02Z")
The only thing worse than onions are people who want to make you eat onions. They can’t understand that some people’s sense of taste is more sensitive than theirs, and that it cannot tolerate the coarse, pungent, sulfuric bitterness of onions. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2011, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/90 "2011-08-09T07:14:15Z")
I will admit that I like onions, nothing quite like thinly sliced red onion and liverwurst on rye, or the butter and fried onions on pierogies, or finely diced in omelets or in soups and stews, but I do not need to put them in everything. I have a buddy who is allergic to onions and I frequently will make stuff without the normal onions if I am expecting him for dinner. What I also do NOT like is the preponderance of bell peppers and or mushrooms in prepared foods, or the use of mystery oils [you know - this product may have palm, soy or peanut oil, depending on what they got cheap that batch] I do not care that bell peppers and mushrooms are cheap, or colorful letting the manufacturer bulk out or dress up the food on the cheap - many people hate the taste of them or are allergic to them. THese ingredients tend to make convenience foods impossible for me to use. I really don’t mind, I love cooking from scratch but dammit, sometimes when I was working I would have loved to be able to have the use of tv dinners for lunch some days when I was doggedly busy. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2011, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/91 "2011-08-09T08:13:26Z")
I’m curious. Most people I know hate onions as a kid, but like them as they get older (although not to the point of just eating them by themselves raw.) So, those of you who do not like onions: are there other foods you “grew into” liking? Be sure to include things that still taste the same, but that are somehow okay, now. For example, when I was growing up, I thought wheat thins tasted like grass, and hated it. Now I love it, even though I still think it tastes like grass. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2011, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/92 "2011-08-09T09:53:03Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > I will admit that I like onions, nothing quite like thinly sliced red onion and liverwurst on rye, or the butter and fried onions on pierogies, or finely diced in omelets or in soups and stews, but I do not need to put them in everything. I have a buddy who is allergic to onions and I frequently will make stuff without the normal onions if I am expecting him for dinner. > > What I also do NOT like is the preponderance of bell peppers and or mushrooms in prepared foods, or the use of mystery oils [you know - this product may have palm, soy or peanut oil, depending on what they got cheap that batch] I do not care that bell peppers and mushrooms are cheap, or colorful letting the manufacturer bulk out or dress up the food on the cheap - many people hate the taste of them or are allergic to them. THese ingredients tend to make convenience foods impossible for me to use. I really don’t mind, I love cooking from scratch but dammit, sometimes when I was working I would have loved to be able to have the use of tv dinners for lunch some days when I was doggedly busy. I can’t eat black pepper. It will cause a reaction in my gut. I’m not actually allergic to it, but if I eat it, I WILL pay the consequences for days. And guess which ingredient is cheap, and adds a lot of flavor, and masks the mediocrity of other ingredients? I like cooked onions, but I do feel for people who don’t like them, or who shouldn’t eat them ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2011, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/93 "2011-08-09T11:13:38Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > For a second, I forgot that that wasn’t really a Beatles song. Neil Innes has said that he has played Rutles music claiming it is little known Beatles songs and people have believed him. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2011, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/94 "2011-08-09T11:42:12Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I’m curious. Most people I know hate onions as a kid, but like them as they get older That’s my history. When I was a kid my first task at the dinner table was to pick out all the onions. For ms it was more a texture thing than a flavor thing. I was put off by the limp slippery squashiness of cooked onions. Even now I prefer my onions either entirely raw, lightly sautéed, or cooked down until they dissolve. That limp stage can still put me off. ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2011, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/95 "2011-08-09T11:47:53Z")
My maternal grandfather had an onion speech. If anyone dared to declare their hatred for onions in his presence, something like this would follow: “Onions are good for you! You’ve never seen a worm in an onion. It may go rotten but you’ll never see a worm. Onions are good for you!” I never understood the logic, but I love me some onions, as long as they’re cooked. I throw them in soups, quiche, spaghetti sauce, gravy, chili, and sometimes I’ll cook 'em up with mushrooms as a side dish. _mmmmmmmm_ ---
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2011, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/96 "2011-08-11T01:42:55Z")
I hate onions. My uncle came from out of town and cooked dinner for the family. I was helping him prepare the vegetables. Onions. Ugh. Why? I asked. He said that if you don’t like onions then you can pick them from your plate. Other than the onions, a perfect meal. Like Dina from Camp Anawanna, I _sweat_ onions if eaten. ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2011, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/97 "2011-08-11T03:18:10Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > When I’m grilling I do. I’ll take an onion, slice it thick, put some butter between each slice, wrap it in foil and toss it on the grill for about an hour (timed so it finishes with the food). It’ll go on the burgers, I’ll eat what’s leftover…right out of the foil. > > Then, I found I could make the whole process simpler by just putting the entire onion, skin and all, directly on the grill for an hour or so and it sautes itself right in the skin. When it’s done you just slice off an end and the whole thing sort of plops out, ready to be eaten. The nice thing about doing it that way when you have a group is that the outside is really cooked, the center is still a bit sharp and the middle is sort of half sauteed and everyone can chose the part that’s cooked to their liking. I’m going to have to try your way, but the way I do it is peel an onion cut a deep X in the top, salt and pepper, top with butter, lay a couple of slices of bacon over the top, wrap in foil and toss on the grill. ---
**Author:** ![Palo\_Verde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/65b543/32.png) [@Palo\_Verde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palo_Verde)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2011, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/98 "2011-08-11T03:24:40Z")
Onions are disgusting. Whenever I read ‘add onions’ in a recipe, I just add lots of extra garlic. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2011, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/99 "2011-08-11T17:56:26Z")
I share your loathing for onions but have learned to tolerate them if not in excess and to pick them out of my food when feasible. But the horror that is peppers cannot be forgiven. I hate the taste of them going down, and hate them even more as I re-taste them for the rest of the day. Nothing to do with the “heat” of them. Bleeechh. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2011, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/100 "2011-08-11T20:28:21Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > If they are so good why don’t more people just eat onions on their own? Like apples, oranges, peaches , plums, grapes, blueberries, and so on. Sauteing an onion or two and putting them in a little bowl is yummy. It’s like candy. > [@Chronos](#): > > What I don’t understand is Vidalia onions. What’s the point of an onion that doesn’t taste like onion? We eat onions because onions are tasty. I don’t know if raw onions taste that good (not bad either, kinda neutral). I think I mostly like them for the crunchiness and texture. ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_K](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5ac83/32.png) [@Doug\_K](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_K)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873/101 "2011-08-12T01:28:47Z")
This may be a hijack, but I think this question could be asked about a number of ingredients. Mustard, mayonnaise, pickles, catsup, black olives, mushrooms, cheese, and peppers come to mind. These are all things that a significant number of people have strong aversions to, yet all too many people pile or slather various combinations of them on premade sandwiches under the unwarranted assumption that everyone wants them. They’re **condiments** , folks, options to be added either on request, or by the consumer. Even the things on the list that I do like I don’t want on everything or all the time. Sometimes I like a cheeseburger (and that means bun, meat, cheese). Sometimes I like just a plain burger. And please don’t say “You want it driiiieeee?” in an incredulous voice when I want my salad without dressing. I want to taste the veggies. If your salad is really dry, pouring goop on it won’t help. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decided-onions-go-on-almost-everything/591873.md?page=6)