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Sauce

Soubise Sauce

Soubise sauce is a creamy onion sauce made with butter, flour, breadcrumbs, cream or milk, and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Soubise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Soak the onions in boiling water for 10 minutes.

  2. Peel and cut the onions in halves or quarters.

Cook and thicken

  1. In a small saucepan, melt the butter and add the onions.

  2. Simmer very slowly until the onions are fully cooked.

  3. Add salt to taste, then thicken with flour and bread crumbs.

  4. Stir in the cream or milk and pass through a sieve until smooth.

  5. Optionally, add a pinch of sugar.

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

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provide the main body and sweet, mellow flavour of the sauce as they cook down.
Butter
Cooks the onions gently and carries flavour, adding richness to the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid and gelatinising with heat.
Fine bread crumbs
Add further body and help thicken the sauce as they absorb liquid.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, giving the sauce a smooth, rich texture.

The step that matters

Simmer very slowly until the onions are fully cooked. Low, gentle heat softens the onions and draws out their sweetness without browning them. Rushing with higher heat can scorch the butter and onions, leaving a bitter or coloured sauce that is less smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, bread, cream, sugar. 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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