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Bombay Onions

A creamy onion soup made with butter, sugar, pepper, salt, boiled rice or pearl barley, broth, cheese, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bombay Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Roughly chop the Bombay onions and place them in a saucepan with butter, sugar, pepper, and salt.

  2. Cook slowly without browning until the onions are soft.

  3. Add the boiled rice or pearl barley and broth, then simmer until the mixture is soft.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the grated cheese and mix well for 1-2 minutes.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve to create a puree.

  3. Heat gently in a bain-marie and stir in the cream just 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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

Bombay onions
Provide the main body, sweetness and flavour of the soup as they soften slowly.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while the onions cook gently.
Boiled rice or pearl barley
Thickens the soup and gives it a smooth, full body after sieving.
Broth
Supplies the liquid that carries the onions and starch to a simmer.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury depth and a salty, rounded flavour to the soup.
Rich cream
Adds smoothness and mellows the soup when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Cook the onions slowly without browning. Browning gives bitter, caramelised notes that change the flavour of a pale onion soup. Gentle, slow cooking softens the onions and draws out their natural sweetness while keeping the colour light.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, pepper, rice, cheese, cream. 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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