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Spanish Onion Soup

A soup made with butter, onion, flour, water, salt, pepper, milk or cream, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Spanish Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the shredded onion and flour, stirring continually for 5 to 10 minutes.

  3. Pour in the boiling water, add salt and pepper, skim, and boil until the onions are thoroughly cooked.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the milk or cream liaison.

  2. Place the bread pieces in a tureen, pour the soup over, and serve.

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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Provides the main body and sweetness as it cooks down into the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it is stirred with the hot onions and fat.
Butter or dripping
Carries the onions and flour and adds richness to the soup.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and softens the flavour when stirred in at the end.
Bread
Soaks up the broth and gives the soup substance when served over it.

The step that matters

Stirring the onion and flour. Stirring continually keeps the flour from scorching on the bottom of the pan and lets it cook evenly into the fat, which avoids raw floury taste and lumps when the water is added.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, wheat, pepper, milk, bread. 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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