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Soubise, French Onion Sauce

A creamy onion sauce made with onions, butter, broth, cream, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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, French Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and cut the onions, then place them in a basin and cover with boiling water.

  2. Let the onions stand for 10 minutes, then drain.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan without browning.

  2. Add the drained onions and gradually pour in enough broth to cover them, stirring continuously.

  3. Simmer gently until the sauce thickens, stirring all the while.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve and keep it hot in a bain-marie.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

White onions
Form the bulk of the sauce, breaking down into a soft purée that gives body and sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour when melted gently without browning.
Veal or chicken broth
Cooks the onions and provides the liquid that thickens into the sauce.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the sauce thickens. Onions cooked too hard or too long can scorch or lose their delicate sweetness, and the sauce can turn thin or grainy. Gentle heat, with constant stirring, lets the onions soften and release their starch so the sauce thickens evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, veal, cream, 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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