Ingredients

Red Onion

Citation Formats

General Reference

Food and Drink Atlas. "Red Onion." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://food.interactiveatlas.org/ingredients/red-onion.

APA Style

Food and Drink Atlas. (n.d.). Red Onion. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://food.interactiveatlas.org/ingredients/red-onion

BibTeX

@misc{foodanddrinkatlas-red-onion,
  author = {Food and Drink Atlas},
  title = {Red Onion},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://food.interactiveatlas.org/ingredients/red-onion},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

A mild, purple-skinned onion variety widely used raw or lightly cured, common in Latin American and Middle Eastern dishes including Peruvian ceviche and lomo saltado.

Facts

Disputed

Origin Region

Uncertain among Iran, western Pakistan and Central Asia; the onion species (Allium cepa), of which red onion is a color cultivar, is known only from cultivation with no confirmed wild ancestor, so its geographic origin cannot be pinned to one place. 1

the subject's own accountThe source states plainly that the geographic origin of the onion is uncertain and that ancient records span both eastern and western Asia; this entry describes the species generally, since the red-skinned variety has no separately documented origin of its own.

Earliest Documented Use, From (Year)

from 2000 BCE 1

the subject's own accountAnchors to the Mesopotamian cuneiform recipe tablets, the earliest solid documented use of onions in food preparation; broader cultivation claims run to about 7,000 years, but without the same precision, so this fact uses the dated record rather than the vaguer estimate.

Cross-Tradition Connections