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Soubise Soup

A French onion soup with bread, butter, and cream or egg yolks.

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

Soubise Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the bread into very thin slices.

  2. Boil the bread in the water and milk with the sliced onions.

  3. Add the butter, pepper, and salt.

  4. When thoroughly stewed to a pulp, strain through a wire sieve.

  5. Set it back on the fire and let it simmer for a few minutes.

  6. Just before serving, add the cream or egg yolks.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Breaks down into a pulp that thickens the soup body.
Onions
Softens and sweetens as they stew, adding savory depth to the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Egg yolks
Stirred in at the end to enrich the soup and add body; cream may be used instead.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks or cream. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the soup is too hot or boiled after they go in. Adding them just before serving, off the boil, keeps the soup smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, bread, egg, 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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