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Onion Puree

A creamy onion sauce made by blending boiled onions with butter, flour, milk, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Onion Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions and boil them in two changes of water until very soft.

  2. Drain the onions well and pass them through a puree sieve to measure 2 cups of onion pulp.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the flour until well blended.

  2. Gradually pour in the milk while stirring constantly.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the onion puree.

  4. Season with salt and cayenne pepper, bring to a boil again, and serve.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Onion pulp
Provides the main body, flavor and sweetness of the puree.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, stable base.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which thickens as the flour cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring the milk into the roux. Adding milk gradually while stirring constantly keeps the flour and butter mixture smooth. Dumping it in at once can trap lumps of starch that do not dissolve evenly, leaving a grainy texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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