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Onion and Cheese Soup

A soup made from fried onions, stock, toast, and grated Parmesan cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and parmesan cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,163 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Onion and Cheese Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Fry the sliced onions in butter until golden.

  2. Add the fried onions to the hot stock.

  3. Pour the mixture into an earthenware cooking pot.

Top and serve

  1. Float small rounds of toast on the surface, thickly sprinkled with grated Parmesan cheese.

  2. Serve in the cooking pot as hot as possible.

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 + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Onion + parmesan cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,717 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Sweetness and savory flavor as they caramelize when fried golden in butter.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and helps the onions brown and turn golden.
Parmesan cheese
Melts and browns on the toast, adding salty, savory flavor and a crisp top.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until golden. Onions need enough time in butter for their sugars to caramelize and brown. Pale, under-cooked onions give a flat, raw taste, while well-browned onions build the deep flavor of the soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parmesan cheese. 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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