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Sauce

Sauce Soubise

A French onion sauce made with onions, butter, flour, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Sauce Soubise

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sauce Soubise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and slice the onions.

  2. Cook the onions in boiling salted water until very soft.

  3. Drain and press out as much water as possible, then rub the onions through a sieve to obtain 1 cup of onion purée.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then add the flour and stir constantly.

  2. Gradually pour in the milk while stirring until smooth.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and cayenne, then add the onion purée.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce into the center of a hot serving dish.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Break down into a purée that gives the sauce its body, sweetness and mild flavor.
Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux and carries flavor into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with the butter as a roux, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it is combined with the roux.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the milk while stirring until smooth. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the starch in the roux dispersed, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, pepper. 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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