Skip to main content
Main

Soubise Sauce or Puree

A smooth onion sauce made with butter, flour, cream, and onions, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Soubise Sauce or Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Soak the onions in boiling water for 10 minutes.

  2. Peel and cut the onions into halves or quarters.

Cook and finish the sauce

  1. In a small saucepan, melt the butter and add the onions.

  2. Simmer slowly until the onions are fully cooked.

  3. Add salt to taste and thicken with flour.

  4. Stir in the cream or milk and pass through a sieve.

  5. Serve thick and smooth, optionally adding a pinch of sugar.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provide the main flavour and body as they soften and sweeten while simmering.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps soften the onions gently in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and moisture, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy body.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour. Flour must be stirred in evenly so it disperses without lumps. Its starch only thickens the sauce fully when heated, so the sauce needs to stay warm while it sets.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Leekbetter flavor fit
  2. Arrowrootbetter flavor fit
  3. Chivebetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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