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Oatmeal and Onion Soup

A hearty soup made with onions, butter, stock, oatmeal, cornflour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Oatmeal and Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onion

  1. Peel and slice the onion.

  2. Scald and drain the onion, then cut it into thin slices.

Make the soup

  1. Cook the onion in butter over medium heat for 30 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally.

  2. Add the stock and bring to a boil.

  3. Gradually stir in the oatmeal and simmer for 1.5 hours.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Mix the cornflour with a little milk to make a paste, then add it to the soup.

  6. Boil for an additional 10 minutes, thinning with more stock or hot milk if necessary.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Forms the sweet, savoury base of the soup as it cooks down in butter.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavour and adds richness as it cooks gently.
Stock
Provides the liquid body of the soup and carries its savoury flavour.
Oatmeal
Simmers into the soup, thickening it and giving it a fuller texture.
Cornflour
Thickens the soup further once mixed into a paste and boiled.

The step that matters

Gradually stirring in the oatmeal. Adding oatmeal all at once can clump and scorch on the bottom of the pan. Stirring it in slowly keeps it dispersed so it thickens the soup evenly during the long simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, milk):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, milk. 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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