Skip to main content
Main

Onion Soup

A creamy onion soup made with butter, onions, stock, milk, bread crumbs, and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over low heat and add the diced onions.

  2. Cook gently for 1 hour, ensuring the onions do not discolor.

  3. Add the white stock (or water), milk, and bread crumbs, then simmer for 45 minutes.

  4. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve and return it to the stewpan.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the soup until very hot, then season with pepper and salt.

  2. Gradually stir in the grated cheese until melted.

  3. 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. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften slowly to build sweetness and the soup's main flavour base.
Butter
Carries the onions' flavour and adds richness to the soup.
Bread
Thickens the liquid, giving the soup body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the savoury flavour.
Grated cheese
Melts into the hot soup to add savoury richness and a little body.

The step that matters

Cooking the onions gently. Low, slow heat softens the onions and draws out their natural sugars, which gives sweetness and depth. Higher heat browns or discolors them, leading to a bitter, harsher taste.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, bread, pepper, cheese. 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 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes