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Soubise Sauce

A creamy French onion sauce made with onions, butter, flour, mashed potatoes, stock, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Soubise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and slice the onions.

  2. Combine onions, butter, salt, and pepper in a stewpan.

  3. Cover and cook on low heat until the onions are soft but not browned.

Make the sauce

  1. Add flour and mashed potatoes to the pan.

  2. Pour in the stock and cream.

  3. Stir over heat for 15 minutes.

  4. Pass through a sieve.

Hold and serve

  1. Keep warm in a bain-marie until ready to 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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Break down into soft, sweet body that forms the base of the sauce.
Butter
Carries the onions as they soften and adds richness and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the back of a spoon.
Mealy potatoes
Mashed into the sauce to add body and a smooth, fuller texture.
Stock
Forms the liquid base and adds savoury depth.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cooking the onions low and slow. If the onions brown, they develop bitter, caramelised flavours that change the sauce's pale, delicate character. Gentle heat under a lid softens them through steam without colour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, flour, potato, 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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