Skip to main content
Main

Soupe D V Onion

A French onion soup made with onions, butter, sugar, bouillon, brandy, pepper, sea salt, served with French roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Soupe D V Onion

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Fry the onions in 2 tablespoons of butter until golden brown.

  2. Transfer the onions to a stewpan with 1 ounce of fresh butter and 1 tablespoon of sugar.

  3. Add 4 cups of bouillon and heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in ⅓ cup of French brandy and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Cut the French roll into pieces and place in the soup tureen before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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
Slow browning builds the sweet, deep flavour that defines the soup.
Butter
Fat carries flavour and helps the onions brown evenly in the pan.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the onions caramelise to a deeper colour.
Bouillon
Forms the liquid base of the soup.
French brandy
Adds aroma and a sharp note that balances the sweet onions.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until golden brown. Onions cook slowly as their moisture evaporates and their sugars caramelise. Rushing this with high heat can scorch them, making the soup bitter, while under-browning leaves it flat and pale.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes