Skip to main content
Main

Onion Soup

A savory soup made with onions, milk, water, veal or fowl, bacon, pepper, salt, butter, flour, and toasted bread pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the chopped onions in the milk and water mixture.

  2. Add the veal or fowl and bacon, along with pepper and salt.

  3. Cook until the onions are soft and pulpy.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour to create a paste.

  5. Stir the paste into the soup to thicken it.

  6. Remove the meat from the soup.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup with the toasted bread pieces.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Break down into a soft, pulpy base that gives the soup its body and sweetness.
Butter and flour
Form a paste that thickens the soup as it is stirred in.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the broth.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savory fat and aroma to the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour paste into the soup. Flour mixed with butter forms a roux-like paste that thickens the liquid. If it is dropped in as lumps rather than blended smoothly, the flour clumps and the soup turns out uneven.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

More onion soup recipes

French 31Brown 15with Milk 7White 5Bavarian 4Bermuda 4 See all 236 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes