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Sauce

A creamy onion sauce made with butter, sugar, pepper, salt, rice or barley, broth, cheese, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Parboil the onions and cut them roughly.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the onions, butter, sugar, pepper, and salt.

  2. Cook slowly without browning until the onions are soft.

  3. Add the rice or barley and broth, then simmer until soft.

  4. Stir in the grated cheese and mix well for 1-2 minutes.

  5. Pass the mixture through a sieve to create a puree.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat gently in a bain-marie and stir in the 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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 sweet, mellow flavour of the sauce as they soften.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Boiled rice or pearl barley
Thickens the sauce and gives it body once simmered and pureed.
Broth
Supplies liquid so the onions and starch can simmer into a soft, saucy consistency.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury, salty depth and helps enrich the sauce's flavour.
Rich cream
Adds smoothness and richness when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Cook slowly without browning until the onions are soft. High heat caramelises onion sugars and browns the surface, which turns the sauce brown and bitter-tasting instead of sweet and pale. Gentle heat softens the onions evenly so they puree smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, pepper, rice, 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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