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Onion Soup

A savory soup made with onions, celery, butter, water, bread crumbs, milk, pepper, salt, and optional mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Onion Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sliced onions and celery, and stir over gentle heat for about 5 minutes.

  3. Add the hot water, mace, and bread crumbs.

  4. Boil until tender, then rub through a sieve.

  5. Return to the saucepan, add the milk, and stir until boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot with fried bread cut into dice.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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, forming the main body of the soup.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the soup and give it body as they cook in the liquid.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the vegetables and adds richness to the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the soup when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Rub through a sieve. Boiling until tender softens the onions and bread so they can be pressed smooth; if they are undercooked, the purée stays grainy and the soup feels rough.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, celery, butter, bread, milk, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, celery, butter, bread, milk, 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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