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Sauce

Soubise Sauce

A smooth onion sauce made by boiling sliced onions in milk, rubbing them through a sieve, and combining them with white sauce.

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 ↓

Soubise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the purée

  1. Slice the onions.

  2. Boil them in the milk with a little salt until tender.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish the sauce

  1. Return it to the saucepan with the white sauce.

  2. Boil for about ten minutes.

  3. Season with pepper and sugar.

  4. Add more salt if necessary.

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. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Provide the main body and mild sweetness once cooked and puréed.
Milk
Cooks the onions soft and forms the creamy liquid of the sauce.
White sauce
Thickens the purée and gives it a smooth, coating texture.

The step that matters

Boiling after adding the white sauce. Milk-based sauces can scorch and stick to the base of the pan as they thicken. Keeping the heat controlled and stirring helps the sauce stay smooth and avoids a burnt taste.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, sauce, 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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