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Boiled Onions in Cream

A dish of boiled onions simmered in cream, butter, and flour to thicken.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

Boiled Onions in Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the onions

  1. Boil the onions in water for about 1 hour, or until tender.

  2. Drain the water and season the onions with salt and pepper.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Add the cream and butter to the onions and bring to a boil.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the flour with water until smooth.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling onions to thicken.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 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
Become tender and mildly sweet, forming the body of the dish.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a silky texture that coats the onions.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a smoother mouthfeel.
All-purpose flour
Its starch thickens the hot cream into a sauce that clings to the onions.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the boiling onions. Flour lumps if it is added unevenly. Mixing it into a smooth slurry first and stirring it into the hot liquid disperses the starch so the sauce thickens evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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