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Sauce

Soubise or Onion Sauce

A sauce made from boiled onions, white sauce, white pepper, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Soubise or Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Boil the onions until tender, then chop them quickly.

  2. Put the chopped onions into cold water while you prepare the white sauce.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add ¼ teaspoon of white pepper to the white sauce.

  2. Drain the onions and add them to the sauce along with a little cream if desired.

  3. Let the mixture cook together for 10 minutes and serve.

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. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. White pepper + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,439 recipes
  5. Onion + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

Medium sized onions
Soften into the sauce, adding body and a mild sweetness as they cook.
White sauce
Provides a smooth, creamy base that thickens the dish and carries the onion flavour.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, sauce, 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.

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