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Onion Porridge

A simple porridge made by cooking onions with butter and water, optionally thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Onion Porridge

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the onions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped small and large onions with the butter.

  2. Sauté the onions over medium heat, being careful not to burn them.

Simmer and thicken

  1. Once the onions are half cooked, pour in the boiling water.

  2. Simmer until the onions are fully cooked.

  3. If desired, thicken the porridge with flour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provide the main bulk and, when softened slowly, natural sweetness and body.
Butter
Adds fat for gentle frying and a rich, savoury flavour to the onions.
Flour
Starch that swells in the hot liquid to thicken the porridge, if used.

The step that matters

Sautéing the onions without burning them. Medium heat lets sugars in the onions caramelise gradually and build sweetness. Higher heat or too long a time scorches the sugars, leaving bitter, burnt flavour that the porridge cannot fix later.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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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