My French grandmother always sticks cloves into an onion. When I discovered why she did this, I was surprised, as I had never seen it before. Now, I do it myself and I’m absolutely thrilled with this trick. Let me explain what cloves in an onion are for

Your grandmother was using a classic French cooking technique called an oignon piqué—an onion studded with whole cloves.

🧅 Why put cloves in an onion?

The main purpose is to gently flavor soups, stocks, sauces, and stews.

Typically, you:

1. Peel a whole onion.
2. Stick 4–6 whole cloves into the onion.
3. Add it to a pot of soup, stock, stew, or sauce.
4. Let it simmer.
5. Remove the onion—and the cloves—before serving.

The onion slowly releases its flavor while the cloves provide a warm, aromatic note. It can be especially good in French-style stocks, béchamel sauce, lentil dishes, and hearty stews.

Why not just add the cloves separately?

Studding them into the onion makes them easy to remove later. Loose whole cloves can be surprisingly unpleasant to bite into, so the onion essentially acts as a convenient flavor-infusing “holder.”

It’s not really a secret health remedy or a way to “detox” the body—it’s primarily a traditional culinary technique.

Tip: Don’t use ground cloves for this. Whole cloves are what you want, and a few go a long way.