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Puree of Onions

A smooth onion puree made with onions, salt, pepper, nutmeg, broth, white sauce, cream, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Puree of Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and slice the onions.

  2. Parboil the onions in water for a few minutes, then drain.

  3. Plunge the onions into cold water and press in a cloth to extract all the water.

Cook the onions

  1. In a stewpan, combine the onions with salt, mignonette pepper, nutmeg, and white broth.

  2. Cover and simmer on low heat for about 35 minutes.

  3. Pour the onions into a pan and moisten with white sauce and cream.

  4. Reduce the puree quickly over high heat, then rub through a fine sieve onto a dish.

  5. Just before serving, stir in the 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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Form the bulk of the puree, providing the body and flavour of the dish.
White sauce
Adds richness and body, giving the puree a smooth, thick texture.
Cream
Adds fat for a silky mouthfeel and a smoother, richer texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savoury onion flavour.

The step that matters

Extracting the water after parboiling. Onions hold a lot of water, and any left in the puree dilutes the flavour and loosens the texture. Pressing them firmly in a cloth removes it, and the puree must then be reduced over high heat to thicken it again.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, sauce, 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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