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To Make Onion Soup

A soup made from boiled onions, chicken broth, milk, water, and cream, seasoned with cayenne pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 17,814 recipes mention both. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

To Make Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Boil the onions in equal parts milk and water, changing the liquid three times until soft.

  2. Rub the cooked onions through a fine sieve.

Make the broth

  1. Cut the chicken into pieces and boil with the mace for gravy.

  2. Strain the chicken broth and mix it with the onion pulp.

Finish and serve

  1. Gently boil the mixture with the grated bread and cream.

  2. Season with cayenne pepper and salt to taste.

  3. Add asparagus or spinach if desired, and garnish with grated brown bread crust.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,814 recipes

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

  2. Onion + asparagustop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,212 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + asparagustop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,968 recipes

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Chicken + asparagustop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Spanish onions
Form the main body and sweet flavour of the soup once softened and pureed.
Old cock (chicken)
Provides savoury meaty flavour to the broth the onions are mixed into.
Bread crumb
Thickens the soup as it simmers with the cream and onion pulp.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Rub the cooked onions through a fine sieve. Pressing the soft onions through a fine sieve breaks down the fibres and gives the smooth, even texture the soup depends on; leftover lumps or skins will stay in the finished soup.

Flavor stand-ins for the asparagus

The recipe marks asparagus as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, milk, chicken, mace, cream, pepper, bread):

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Leekabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, milk, chicken, mace, cream, pepper, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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