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Onion Sauce, White

A creamy white sauce flavored with boiled onions, sugar, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Onion Sauce, White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Skin, slice, and boil the onions until tender.

  2. Strain the onions and press out all the water.

  3. Rub the onions through a wire sieve and then a fine sieve.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add enough White Sauce to achieve a thick cream consistency.

  2. Stir in the sugar and coarse sea salt.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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 body and sweet flavour of the sauce once cooked and puréed.
White sauce
Adds richness and thickens the purée into a cream-like consistency.
Sugar
Rounds out the onion flavour with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Pressing out the water. Onions hold a lot of water, and any left in the purée dilutes the flavour and thins the sauce. Pressing after straining removes it so the White Sauce can thicken the mixture to the intended cream consistency.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, cream, sugar. 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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