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Onion Soup

A hearty soup made from bones, onions, celery, flour, and bread, simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Chop the bones and fat into small pieces and place them in a large pot with 1 gallon of cold water. Boil for 1 hour.

  2. Peel the onions and trim the tops and bottoms off the celery. Place them in a net and add them to the pot with the remaining water. Boil.

Finish the soup

  1. After 40 minutes, remove the onions and celery, then pulp them. Return the pulp to the pot along with the salt, sugar, pepper, and flour mixed together. Boil for an additional 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Cut the bread into dice, place it in a bowl, and pour the soup over it. Serve immediately.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Provide the bulk of the flavour and sweetness as they cook down into the soup.
Fat and bones
Release flavour and richness into the water during the long boil, forming the stock.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it boils, giving it body.
Bread
Soaks up the hot soup, becoming soft and giving the dish substance.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the savoury onion and stock flavours.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to the pot. Flour mixed in unevenly or added without being mixed smooth can form lumps that do not dissolve. Stirring it in well before boiling helps it thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, celery, pepper, flour, 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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