Skip to main content
Sauce

Onion or Sauce Soubise

A creamy French onion sauce made with onions, butter, flour, stock, cream, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Onion or Sauce Soubise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and slice the onions.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the onions.

  3. Cover and simmer gently for about 45 minutes until the onions are colored and tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the flour, mix well, and press through a colander.

  2. Stir in the stock and cream, and cook while stirring until it boils.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg before serving.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Soften and sweeten as they cook, becoming the body of the sauce.
Butter
Cooks the onions gently and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter and onions.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture.
Stock
Provides liquid and savory depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the onions gently until colored and tender. Gentle heat under a cover softens the onions and draws out their sweetness without scorching them. Browning too fast can make the sauce bitter and uneven in flavor.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes