Skip to main content
Main

Cream of Onion Soup

A soup made from sliced onions, butter, flour, water, sugar, mace, milk, cream, and chopped hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cream of Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Peel and slice the onions.

  2. Fry the onions in butter until light brown.

  3. Add flour and boiling water, then season to taste.

Simmer and finish

  1. Stir in sugar and mace, and cook gently for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and add milk and cream.

  3. Stir in the chopped hard boiled eggs and 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 flavour and body of the soup as they soften and sweeten during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and helps the onions brown lightly, building savoury flavour.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the liquid, giving it a smooth body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the strained soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture.

The step that matters

Frying the onions in butter until light brown. Frying too hot or too long can scorch the onion sugars and make the soup bitter, while stopping too early leaves a flat, raw-onion taste. Gentle, even browning builds the sweet, savoury base of the soup.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes