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Onion Puree

A smooth onion puree made by cooking onions, blending, and thickening with butter, flour, and milk, seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Onion Puree

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the onions

  1. Cook the onions and drain them well.

  2. Rub the onions through a sieve to get a smooth puree.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir for 1 minute.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. Mix in the onion puree and season with salt and cayenne pepper.

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 flavour and, once pureed, the body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and carries flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked briefly in the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into a creamy sauce with the flour.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until thickened. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, preventing lumps. Constant stirring lets starch granules swell and gelatinise smoothly as the sauce heats.

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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