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Onion Soup, with Milk

A creamy onion soup made with butter, onions, water, milk, and toasted bread.

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, with Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the chopped onions.

  2. Cook slowly until lightly colored.

  3. Add the hot water and cook for 15 minutes.

  4. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  5. Return the puree to the saucepan.

  6. Add the boiling milk and stir until it boils.

  7. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Place the toasted bread pieces in a soup tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the bread.

  3. Cover and serve hot.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Provide the main flavor and, once cooked and pureed, the body of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the onions cook gently and brown lightly.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavor of the puree.

The step that matters

Cook the onions slowly until lightly colored. Slow cooking softens the onions and develops sweetness through gentle browning. High heat can scorch the sugars, giving a bitter taste that carries into the finished soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, pepper, bread. 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.

More onion soup recipes

French 31Brown 15with Milk 7White 5Bavarian 4Bermuda 4 See all 236 →

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