Skip to main content
Main

Onion Soup

A savory soup made from pureed onions, butter, milk, peas, garlic, carrot, turnip, and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the purees

  1. Boil the onions in water until soft.

  2. Pass the cooked onions through a sieve.

  3. Mix the onion puree with butter, milk, pepper, and salt.

  4. Boil the peas in water with a pinch of baking soda until soft. Add more water if necessary.

  5. Pass the peas through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Fry the sliced onion and chopped garlic in butter until golden brown.

  2. Add the cloves, carrot, turnip, and pea puree to the pot.

  3. Simmer until the carrot and turnip are soft.

  4. Strain the soup again.

  5. Season with pepper and salt.

Serve

  1. Serve with dried powdered mint and fried bread.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Give the soup its main body and sweet, savoury flavour once cooked and puréed.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and helps the onions and garlic brown when fried.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the puréed soup base.
Dried green peas
Thicken the soup and add earthy body when puréed.
Garlic
Adds aroma and pungent flavour that mellows during frying.
Baking soda
Helps the peas break down and soften during boiling.

The step that matters

Fry the onion and garlic until golden brown. Browning builds deep, sweet flavour through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Pale or burnt onions will give the soup a flat or bitter taste, so watch the colour closely.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, milk, pepper, clove, garlic, carrot):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, milk, pepper, clove, garlic, carrot. 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 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes