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Sauce

Sauce D’oignon.— Onion Sauce

A sauce made by boiling onions in milk, then mixing with butter and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sauce D’oignon.— Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the onions in the milk until tender.

  2. Beat the onions very fine.

  3. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the beaten onions, using a little of the milk instead of water.

Finish

  1. Before serving, stir in the white-wine vinegar.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Wine + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Form the body of the sauce, giving it bulk and a soft, thick texture once beaten.
Milk
Cooks the onions gently and becomes the liquid that makes the sauce smooth and creamy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a silky mouthfeel.
White-wine vinegar
Adds a light acidity that brightens the sweet, mild flavour of the onions.

The step that matters

Beat the onions very fine. Onions left in coarse pieces make a grainy, lumpy sauce. Fine beating breaks down the cell walls so the onion pulp blends smoothly into the milk and butter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, wine, vinegar):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, wine, vinegar. 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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