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Onion Soup, Cheap

A simple onion soup made with onions, butter, rice flour, water, salt, pepper, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Onion Soup, Cheap

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Chop the onions finely.

  2. In a stewpan, melt the butter and fry the onions until well cooked.

Make the soup

  1. Mix the rice flour smoothly with the water.

  2. Add the onions, salt, pepper, and sugar to the water mixture.

  3. Simmer until the onions are tender.

  4. Thicken the soup with a mixture of butter and flour. 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. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Form the bulk of the soup and, when cooked slowly, add sweetness and deep flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavor while the onions fry.
Rice flour
Starch that thickens the water into a smooth, body-rich broth.
Powdered sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the savory onions.

The step that matters

Mix the rice flour smoothly with the water.. Starch clumps when it meets liquid unevenly. Dispersing the flour in cold water first lets each granule hydrate separately, so the soup thickens evenly without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rice, flour, pepper, sugar. 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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