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Soubise, French Onion Sauce

A creamy French onion sauce made with onions, butter, broth, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Soubise, French Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and cut the onions, then place them in a basin.

  2. Pour boiling water over the onions until covered and let them stand for 10 minutes, then drain.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan without browning.

  2. Add the drained onions to the melted butter.

  3. Gradually add enough veal or chicken broth to cover the onions, stirring continuously.

  4. Add the boiling cream and a pinch of powdered sugar if desired.

  5. Simmer gently until the sauce thickens, stirring frequently.

  6. Rub the sauce through a sieve and keep hot in a bain-marie.

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

White onions
Provide the sweet, mild body that the sauce is built on and thickened from.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the onion flavour when melted gently without browning.
Cream
Adds richness and body, helping the sauce become smooth and thick as it simmers.
Veal or chicken broth
Supplies savoury depth and liquid to cook the onions until they soften into the sauce.

The step that matters

Melt the butter without browning. Browned butter gives a nutty, bitter taste and dark colour that would spoil the pale, delicate flavour of a white sauce. Keeping the heat low lets the onions soften gently in the fat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, veal, 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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