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Onion Cream Soup

A creamy soup made from mutton stock, onions, flour, butter, milk, salt, white pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Slice the onions and add them to the mutton stock.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour.

  3. Rub the mixture through a colander and return it to the heat.

Finish and season

  1. Thicken the soup with a paste made from the flour and butter.

  2. Bring the milk to a boil and stir it into the soup.

  3. Season with salt, white pepper, and minced parsley.

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 + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

Onions
Break down during simmering to give the soup its body and sweet, mellow flavour.
Flour
Combined with butter into a paste that thickens the soup as it heats.
Butter
Forms the roux with flour and adds richness to the thickened soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the soup's flavour when stirred in.

The step that matters

Thickening with the flour and butter paste. Flour must be cooked into the butter and whisked smoothly into the hot soup; otherwise it can clump or leave a raw, pasty taste. Stirring as it heats lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the soup.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, flour, butter, milk, parsley. 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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