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Onion Soup with Water

A simple onion soup made with sliced onions, grease, flour or breadcrumbs, water, salt, pepper, and cold cooked vegetables, finished with bread pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Onion Soup with Water

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stewpan, heat the grease and add the sliced onions.

  2. Cook the onions, stirring frequently, until they are half brown.

  3. Stir in the flour or bread crumbs and brown well.

  4. Add the boiling water, salt, pepper, and chopped cold cooked vegetables.

  5. For extra flavor, add the small pieces of bread to the soup when it is brown.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (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 + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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
Caramelizing slowly in fat builds sweetness and deep brown color for the soup.
Flour or fine bread crumbs
Browning with the fat and onions adds toasted flavor and thickens the soup.
Bread
Small pieces added near the end absorb broth and add body and a toasted note.

The step that matters

Browning the onions. Cooking the onions slowly until they are well browned develops sweetness and color. Rushing this step with high heat can scorch them, leaving bitterness that carries into the whole soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

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