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Sauce

Onion Puree a LA Soubise

A creamy French onion puree made with onions, stock or milk, cream or milk with egg yolk, and a touch of gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Onion Puree a LA Soubise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Simmer the onions in stock or milk until tender.

  2. Mash the onions and pass them through a sieve.

Finish the sauce

  1. Mix the onion pulp with cream (or milk with egg yolk) and a little gravy.

  2. Season with pepper and salt, then heat until very hot.

  3. Serve with a consistency like thick custard.

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

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

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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
Become a smooth pulp that forms the body and flavour of the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, thick texture as the sauce heats.
Egg yolk
Helps thicken the milk into a custard-like sauce when heated.

The step that matters

Heating the sauce. Once the egg yolk is in, the sauce must be heated carefully, since egg proteins can curdle or scramble if it boils, which would ruin the smooth, custard-like texture.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, pepper. 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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