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Onion Sauce

A sauce made from boiled onions, milk, flour, butter, salt, and pepper, served with roast pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions.

  2. Boil the onions until tender.

  3. Drain the onions.

  4. Chop the onions finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and butter to the milk, stirring until combined.

  3. Stir in the chopped onions and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Boil the sauce for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce with roast pork.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Milk + flourtop 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

Onions
Provide the main flavour and body of the sauce as they soften and break down.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and gives it a smooth, creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the sauce becomes smooth and coats the back of a spoon.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the milk.

The step that matters

Add the flour and butter to the milk. Flour must be stirred in evenly so it does not form lumps; it thickens as it heats, so the milk should be stirred steadily while the sauce comes to a boil.

Swap the onion

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

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

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