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Menu for a Party of Eight

A creamy onion puree made with butter, sugar, pepper, salt, rice or barley, broth, cheese, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Menu for a Party of Eight

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Parboil the onions.

  2. Cut the parboiled onions roughly.

Make the soup

  1. Place the onions in a saucepan with butter, sugar, pepper, and salt.

  2. Cook slowly without browning until the onions are soft.

  3. Add rice or barley and broth, and simmer until the mixture is soft.

  4. Stir in the grated cheese and mix well for 1-2 minutes.

  5. Pass the mixture through a sieve to create a puree.

  6. Heat gently in a double boiler and stir in the cream before serving.

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 + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bombay onions
Form the base of the soup, becoming sweet and soft as they cook down into a puree.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour while the onions cook slowly.
Boiled rice or pearl barley
Adds body and thickness, helping the puree feel smooth and substantial.
Broth
Supplies liquid that softens the onions and carries their flavour through the soup.
Rich cream
Adds smoothness and a mellow, rounded richness to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Cook slowly without browning. Gentle heat softens the onions and draws out their natural sweetness. High heat browns them, producing bitter, caramelised notes that change the soup's clean flavour and pale colour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, pepper, rice, cheese, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, pepper, rice, cheese, 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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