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Onions a LA Creme

Creamed onions made by boiling onions, then cooking with butter, flour, salt, pepper, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Onions a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and boil the onions in salted water until tender.

  2. Drain the onions and place them in a saucepan with the butter and flour.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Shake the pan until the butter is melted.

  2. Add salt and white pepper, then gradually stir in enough cream to nearly cover the onions.

  3. Shake the pan until it is almost boiling, then 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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
Provide the main body of the dish, becoming tender when boiled and soaking up the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and helping the sauce feel smooth.
Flour
Thickens the cream so it clings to the onions instead of running off.
Cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and a silky texture.

The step that matters

Adding the cream gradually. Stirring cream in slowly while the butter and flour are warm lets the starch hydrate evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, cream. 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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