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Baked Onion Soup

A baked soup made with onions, butter, bread, consommé, and grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Baked Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make and assemble

  1. Fry the onions in butter until brown.

  2. Place the bread slices in a heatproof dish.

  3. Top the bread with the fried onions.

  4. Fill the dish with consommé or stock.

  5. Sprinkle grated cheese on top.

Bake

  1. Cover the dish and bake for 10 minutes.

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. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Caramelise into sweet, savoury flavour that forms the body of the soup.
Bread slices
Soak up the stock and hold the topping together as a soft base.
Consommé or stock
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and carries the soup's flavour.
Grated cheese
Melts and browns on top, adding richness and a golden crust.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until brown. Onions must be browned slowly and fully, since the Maillard reaction and caramelisation build the deep, sweet flavour the soup depends on. Pale onions give a flat, under-flavoured result.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Tomatofits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, cheese. 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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