Onion ring
deep fried onion slices dipped in batter
Onion rings (also called French-fried onion rings) generally consist of a cross-sectional "ring" of onion dipped in batter or breadcrumbs and then deep fried; a variant is made with onion paste. While typically served as a side dish, onion rings are often eaten by themselves.
Onion strings are a variant where the onion is cut vertically first, resulting in strips rather than circles. When cut into wedges, often using sweet onions, they may be known as onion chips.
History
The earliest recipe for onion rings dates back to 1802, when British food writer John Mollard published The Art of Cookery Made Easy and Refined. It called for cutting onions into slices, dipping them into a batter including Parmesan cheese, and deep-frying them in lard. The recipe also suggested serving them with a sauce of melted butter and mustard.
Many recipes for deep-fried onion slices or rings are found starting in the early 20th century. There are various processes:
No coating: 1902, 1907;
Dipped in milk or egg and coated in flour: 1902, 1908, 1909, 1910, 1916;
Battered: 1919, 1922;
Breaded: 1914.
When battered, the batter may be seasoned.
“Onion ring” enters the record as deep fried onion slices dipped in batter. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Onion, ring and deep can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Onion ring” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Onion, ring and deep provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q244611. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1802, 1902, 1907 and 1908.
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This entry incorporates text from “Onion ring” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.