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Onion Sauce

A sauce made from onions, turnip, milk, butter, flour, pepper, and salt, served with boiled rabbits, partridges, or roast mutton.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel the onions and turnip.

  2. Boil the onions and turnip in milk and water until tender, changing the water twice.

  3. Drain and either pulp the onions through a colander or chop them.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the onions with cream, butter, flour, pepper, and salt.

  2. Heat until smooth and serve with boiled rabbits, partridges, or roast mutton.

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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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, mellow flavour of the sauce.
Milk
Cooks the vegetables tender and adds richness and creaminess to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth mouthfeel and rich flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it becomes smooth and coats the food it is served with.
Turnip
Adds a mild, slightly peppery sweetness and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the onion mixture until smooth. Flour needs sustained gentle heat and stirring to cook out its raw taste and thicken evenly. Heating too fast or without stirring can leave lumps or a pasty flavour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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