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Creamed Onions

A dish of boiled onions coated in a butter, flour, and milk sauce seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Creamed Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions and boil them in salted water for 1 hour.

  2. Drain the onions and cut each into 4 to 6 pieces.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, rub together the butter and flour until creamy.

  2. Heat the milk in a separate pot until it boils.

  3. Add the butter and flour mixture to the boiling milk and stir until creamy.

  4. Season the sauce with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. Pour the cream sauce over the cut onions 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. Butter + flourtop 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).

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 after long boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and combines with flour to form the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce when cooked together with butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the cream sauce, giving it body and a mild, creamy flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture to the boiling milk. Stirring the roux into hot milk while stirring constantly helps it blend smoothly without lumps, because the starch must be dispersed evenly before it thickens.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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