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Soup of Spanish Onions

A soup made with Spanish onions, butter, celery, turnip, and white gravy thickened with rice flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and turnip are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Soup of Spanish Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine the onions, butter, celery, turnip, and 1 quart of white gravy in a stewpan.

  2. Stew until the onions are tender.

  3. Add another quart of gravy.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Pulp the vegetables.

  6. Return them to the soup.

Finish and thicken

  1. Boil for 30 minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. Before serving, thicken the soup with rice flour mixed with butter.

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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Celery + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Spanish onions
Provide the main body and sweetness as they soften and break down into the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor through the stewed vegetables.
Celery
Contributes savory aroma and background flavor to the stock.
Turnip
Adds body and a mild earthy flavor when stewed and pulped.
White gravy
Forms the liquid base that the vegetables cook in and become the soup.
Rice flour
Thickens the soup to a smoother, heavier body when mixed with butter.

The step that matters

Thickening with rice flour. Rice flour must be mixed with butter first and stirred in before serving; added dry or to a boiling liquid it clumps, and starch needs heat to swell and thicken evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, celery, turnip, rice, 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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