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Sauce

Onion Butter

A butter infused with sautéed onion, strained and used to flavor dishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Onion Butter

flavor dishes for 2-3 people

Ingredients

Directions

Make the onion butter

  1. Slice the onion and fry it in butter over medium heat until it shrivels and turns brown.

  2. Strain the mixture through a wire strainer into a small jar with a tight lid.

  3. Discard the onion solids.

Use

  1. Use ¼ teaspoon of the onion butter to flavor dishes for 2-3 people.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

White onion
Browns and softens, releasing sweetness and savory flavor into the butter.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavor and fat, so it can season other dishes.

The step that matters

Frying the onion until brown. Browning the onion slowly in butter develops deeper, sweeter flavor through the Maillard reaction and caramelization. Too little heat leaves it pale and bland, while too much can scorch the butter and make it bitter.

“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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