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Onion Soup with Cheese

A creamy onion soup topped with Gruyère and Parmesan cheese and served with stale bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and parmesan cheese match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,041 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Onion Soup with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Slice the onions thinly and blanch them in boiling water.

  3. Add the onions to the melted butter without browning them.

  4. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper over the onions and stir with a wooden spoon.

  5. Let the mixture come to a boil.

Assemble and serve

  1. Layer slices of stale bread in a tureen.

  2. Grate the Gruyère and Parmesan cheeses finely and mix them together.

  3. Add a layer of cheese on top of the bread, then pour some soup over it.

  4. Repeat with another layer of bread and cheese, then pour in the remaining soup.

  5. Let it stand for 1 hour, keeping the tureen very hot.

  6. Add the boiling 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. Cheese + parmesan cheesetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,041 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook slowly in butter, forming the body of the soup.
Butter
Carries the onions and adds richness, cooking them gently without browning.
Gruyère cheese
Melts into the bread and soup, giving a stringy, savoury texture.
Parmesan cheese
Adds sharp, salty flavour and helps the cheese topping brown and firm up.
Stale bread
Soaks up the soup and cheese, giving the dish its layered, body-filled texture.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Add the onions without browning them. Onions cooked over low heat in butter release sugars and soften gently; browning them gives a bitter, scorched flavour that dominates the soup.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, bread, cheese, parmesan 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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