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Onion Soup with Cheese

A creamy onion soup topped with Gruyère and Parmesan cheese and stale bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Gruyere cheese and parmesan cheese match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 152 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Onion Soup with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Slice the onions thinly and blanch them in boiling water.

  3. Add the onions to the hot butter without browning them.

  4. Sprinkle flour over the onions and stir with a wooden spoon.

  5. Add water or stock and season with salt and pepper.

  6. Bring to a boil.

Layer and serve

  1. Layer stale bread in a tureen and sprinkle with cheese.

  2. Pour some soup over the bread, then add another layer of bread and cheese.

  3. Pour in the remaining soup and let it stand for 30 minutes, keeping the tureen 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. Gruyere cheese + parmesan cheesetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + gruyere cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

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

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, deep flavor as they soften in the butter.
Butter
Carries the onions' flavor and adds richness while they cook gently.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly as it combines with the butter and onion juices.
Gruyere cheese
Melts into the bread layers, adding stretch, savory flavor, and richness.
Stale bread
Soaks up the soup and gives the dish a soft, substantial texture.

The step that matters

Add the onions without browning them. Cooking the onions gently in butter over low heat softens them and draws out sweetness. Browning would add bitter, toasted notes and a different color and flavor to the soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, bread, gruyere cheese, parmesan 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.

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