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Onion Soup, Garbure

A baked onion soup with toasted bread, clarified butter, salt, pepper, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Onion Soup, Garbure

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Cut the ends off the onions, peel them, and slice them into pieces 1/8 inch thick.

  2. In a flat saucepan, heat clarified butter and fry the onions until they are light brown.

Layer and bake

  1. In a deep baking dish, layer thin slices of toasted bread and a layer of onions, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  2. Continue layering with toast and onions until the dish is full.

  3. Moisten the layers with broth and place the dish in the oven to gratinate.

Serve

  1. Serve with a soup tureen of good beef broth.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

White onions
Provide the sweet, savory base of the soup as they slowly brown in butter.
Clarified butter
Fat for frying the onions, adding richness and helping them brown without burning.
Toasted bread
Soaks up broth and holds the layers together, giving the soup body and texture.
Broth
Moistens the layers and forms the liquid that makes the soup.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until light brown. Onions cooked slowly until golden develop sweetness through caramelization; cooking too fast or too hot can scorch them and leave a bitter taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, 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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