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Onions Au Gratin

A baked dish of peeled onions topped with white sauce and buttered cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,474 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Onions Au Gratin

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 the onions

  1. Peel the onions.

  2. Remove the thick layer next to the skin.

  3. Cook the onions in salted water for 3 minutes.

  4. Drain the onions.

  5. Cover the onions with boiling water and cook until nearly done.

  6. Drain the onions well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the onions in a baking dish.

  2. Pour 1 cup of white sauce over the onions.

  3. Add a layer of buttered cracker crumbs on top.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes to heat through and brown the crumbs.

  5. Serve hot.

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 + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Onion and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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 main body of the dish and soften into a tender, sweet filling.
White sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy binding that keeps the onions from drying out.
Buttered cracker crumbs
Add a crisp top that browns in the oven through the butter and dry crumbs.

The step that matters

Drain the onions well. Excess water left on the onions dilutes the white sauce and keeps the topping from crisping, so the gratin turns watery.

“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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