Why it works: Onion and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,474 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Onion Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the onions
Scald the onions.
Boil the onions in salted water until tender.
Drain the onions and rub them through a sieve or chop them finely.
Make the sauce and serve
Add the onions to the white sauce.
Serve with roast mutton or boiled rabbit.
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.
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Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,474 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Onion and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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
- Spanish onions
- Provide the main flavour and bulk of the sauce, softened by boiling until tender.
- White sauce
- Forms the creamy, smooth base that carries the onion and thickens the dish.
The step that matters
Boil the onions until tender. Onions must be fully softened before sieving or chopping, otherwise the sauce will be coarse and sharp. Thorough cooking mellows their sulphur compounds into a sweeter, smoother flavour.
“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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