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Sauce Soubise

A creamy onion sauce made with sautéed onions, butter, sugar, salt, white pepper, and rich cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Sauce Soubise

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sauce Soubise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Boil onions in water for about 20 minutes until tender.

  2. Drain thoroughly.

Make the purée

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

  2. Let them stew until slightly yellow.

  3. Add a pinch of salt, sugar, and a little white pepper.

  4. Mash onions through a coarse sieve.

  5. Mix with an equal amount of rich cream sauce.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with filet of beef, fricandeau, or beefsteak, stirring in the meat juices.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

White onions
Provide the main body and sweet, mild flavor of the sauce once mashed smooth.
Butter
Gently cooks the onions and adds richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Rich cream sauce
Dilutes the onion purée and adds creaminess and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing the onions in butter until slightly yellow. Cooking onions slowly in fat softens them and draws out sweetness, while rushing or overbrowning can make the flavor harsh or bitter. Stop at a pale yellow so the purée stays mild and smooth.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, sugar, cream, sauce. 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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