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Soubise Sauce

Soubise sauce is a creamy onion sauce made with butter, flour, potato, milk, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Soubise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onion

  1. Peel and slice the onion.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the onion, butter, pepper, and salt.

  3. Stew very slowly until the onion dissolves, without allowing it to color.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the mashed potato and flour, stirring until mixed.

  2. Gradually stir in the milk and cook for ten minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve and keep warm until ready to use.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  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

Onion
Breaks down slowly into the sauce, giving it body and a mild sweetness.
Butter
Carries the onion as it stews and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk and gives the sauce a smooth, stable texture.
Mealy potato
Mashed into the sauce, it adds body and helps it thicken smoothly.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour and potato thicken into a sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the onion slowly without coloring. Gentle heat lets the onion soften and dissolve into the butter. If it browns, the sauce takes on bitter, toasted notes and loses its pale, delicate flavor.

Swap the onion

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

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

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