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Onion Sauce

A sauce made from boiled onions, butter, and milk, optionally with turnip.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions and boil them in water until tender.

  2. Drain the water from the onions.

Make the sauce

  1. Chop the onions and pour the drawn butter and rich milk over them.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Optionally, boil a turnip with the onions to make the flavor milder.

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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + turniptop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Provide the main body and sweet, savory flavor of the sauce once softened and chopped.
Drawn butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Rich milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, thinning the onions into a pourable sauce.
Turnip
Boiled with the onions to mellow the sharpness of the flavor.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil. Once the butter and milk are added, boiling must be controlled, because milk proteins can scorch on the bottom of the pan and turn grainy or stick. Stirring keeps the sauce smooth and evenly heated.

Swap the turnip

The recipe marks turnip as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, milk):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, milk. 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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