Skip to main content
Main

Onion Soup

A creamy soup made with onions, butter, stock, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the onions.

Cook the onions

  1. Melt the butter in a pot and add the onions.

  2. Stir occasionally until the onions are tender but not browned.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the stock and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Strain the soup and stir in the boiling cream.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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
Form the soup's base, and their sweetness develops as they soften slowly.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich flavor and helps soften the onions without browning them.
Stock
Provides the liquid that makes up most of the soup and carries its savory flavor.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stir occasionally until the onions are tender but not browned.. Gentle cooking softens the onions and draws out their natural sweetness. Browning adds darker, caramelized flavors that change the soup's mild, pale character.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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.

More onion soup recipes

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes