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Onion Soup, Imaigre

A savory onion soup made with onions, butter, flour, water, eggs, and seasonings.

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 ↓

Onion Soup, Imaigre

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan over low heat, combine minced onions and melted butter.

  2. Sprinkle flour over the onions and stir until tender and lightly browned.

  3. Add boiling water, salt, pepper, and nutmeg; bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the eggs briskly for 1-2 minutes.

  2. Remove the soup from heat, let it cool for 30 seconds, then stir in the eggs.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, savory flavor as they soften and brown.
Butter
Carries the onions as they cook and adds richness and fat to the soup.
Flour
Browns with the onions and thickens the soup as it cooks.
Eggs
Enrich the soup and give it a silky, lightly thickened texture when stirred in.

The step that matters

Stirring in the eggs off the heat. If the soup is too hot when the beaten eggs go in, the egg proteins can scramble into curds instead of blending smoothly. Letting it cool briefly and stirring steadily helps the eggs enrich the soup evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, egg. 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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