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Soubise Sauce

A French onion sauce made with onions, butter, béchamel, sugar, cream, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Soubise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew the onions in butter over low heat until softened, about 30 minutes.

  2. Add the thickened Béchamel, salt, and powdered sugar; stir to combine.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve to smooth the sauce.

  4. Finish the sauce by stirring in cream and additional butter.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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 body and sweet flavour of the sauce as they soften and break down.
Thickened béchamel
Adds body and structure, thickening the sauce so it holds together.
Butter
Cooks the onions gently and adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the onions gently until softened. Cooking the onions over low heat in butter softens them without browning. Browning would add bitter, caramelised notes and a darker colour that does not suit a white sauce, so gentle heat keeps the flavour mild and the texture smooth once sieved.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, cream. 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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