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Creamed Onions

Creamed onions are onions cooked in milk with butter and flour, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Creamed Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions and soak them in cold water.

  2. Cook the onions in water to cover, adding ½ teaspoon salt for every 2 pints of onions.

  3. Once tender, drain the water and add 1 pint of milk.

Finish the sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, cream together 1 heaping tablespoon of butter and 1 heaping teaspoon of flour.

  2. Stir this mixture into the onions carefully to avoid mashing them.

  3. If needed, adjust the salt and add a dash of 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. Milk + buttertop 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. Milk + flourtop 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
Form the bulk of the dish and provide the soft, sweet body of the creamed sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the creamy sauce that coats the onions.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter mixture so the sauce becomes creamy rather than watery.

The step that matters

Stir the flour-butter mixture in gently. Onions are fragile once cooked, and vigorous stirring breaks them down into a mash. Gentle folding keeps the pieces whole while the flour and butter distribute evenly through the milk for a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, 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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