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Bermuda Soup

A creamy soup made from sliced Bermuda onions, butter, flour, milk, cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Bermuda Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and slice the Bermuda onions.

  2. Brown the onions in pork fat or a little butter.

  3. Cook the onions in boiling salted water until tender.

Make the soup

  1. In a double boiler, melt 2 tablespoons of butter.

  2. Stir in 2 tablespoons of flour, then gradually add 2 cups of milk.

  3. Cook until smooth, then add the onions and cook for 30 minutes.

  4. Mash the mixture through a sieve, reheat, and season with 1 teaspoon of salt and pepper.

  5. Stir in ½ cup of cream and serve immediately.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Bermuda onions
Provide the main body and sweet, mellow flavor of the soup.
Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavor when melted into the roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a creamy soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a silkier texture stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Cooking the milk and flour until smooth. Flour must be stirred in fully and the milk added gradually, then cooked, so starch can hydrate and thicken evenly. Adding milk too fast or skipping the cooking time can leave lumps and a raw, pasty taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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