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Onion Soup

A creamy onion soup made with butter, chicken stock, cream, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the sliced onion in butter over medium heat for 8 minutes.

  2. Add chicken stock and let it simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Stir in the cream and the beaten egg.

  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks in butter, building the soup's base flavour.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavour and adds richness as it cooks gently.
Chicken stock
Forms the liquid base and extracts flavour from the onion during simmering.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder texture to the finished soup.
Egg
Thickens the soup gently and adds body when stirred in.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg. Egg proteins set at around 70°C and can scramble if the soup is too hot. Stir the beaten egg in gradually off the heat so it thickens smoothly instead of turning into curds.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, chicken, cream, egg, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, chicken, cream, egg, 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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