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Brown Onion Soup

A savory soup made from thinly sliced onions, beef dripping, flour, stock, and seasonings, served over fried croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brown Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Skin and slice the onions as thinly as possible.

  2. Fry the onions in beef dripping until tender and well browned, then drain them.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the stock in a stewpan until almost boiling.

  2. Mix the baked flour with the dripping in the frying pan and stir over heat until browned.

  3. Gradually add the flour mixture to the stock, stirring until smooth.

  4. Add the fried onions and simmer for 30 minutes.

  5. Remove any fat from the surface, then season with salt, pepper, sharp sauce, mushroom ketchup, and caramel if needed.

  6. Serve over fried croutons.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 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

Onions
Slow frying browns the onions, giving the soup its deep, sweet flavour and colour.
Beef dripping
Fat that carries the browning of the onions and flour, adding rich savoury flavour.
Baked flour
Browned flour thickens the stock and adds a toasted, nutty flavour and colour.
Clear stock
Liquid base that the thickened onions are simmered in, forming the body of the soup.
Sharp sauce
Adds tangy acidity that brightens the rich, savoury flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the dripping. Flour must be stirred over heat until evenly browned before adding stock. Under-browned flour tastes raw and pasty, while over-browned flour turns bitter and dark, and it thickens unevenly if lumps form when the stock is added gradually.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, pepper, sauce, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, pepper, sauce, mushroom, ketchup. 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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