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Onion Soup, Brown

A soup made from boiled vegetables and browned onions thickened with brown roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Onion Soup, Brown

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the onion, carrot, celery, and turnip in water or stock until tender.

  2. Slice the large onions and fry them in butter until browned, not burnt.

  3. Add the fried onions to the boiled vegetables and stock.

Finish the soup

  1. Boil until the onions are tender, then rub the mixture through a wire sieve.

  2. Thicken the soup with brown roux and season with pepper and salt to taste.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Large onions
Frying them until browned builds the deep colour and sweet, savoury flavour of the soup.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onions, helping them brown evenly and adding richness.
Brown roux
Thickens the soup, giving it body as it is stirred in.
Turnip
Adds earthy sweetness and body to the boiled vegetable base.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until browned, not burnt. Onions turn from sweet and golden to bitter when scorched, and the browning reactions that build flavour happen only at controlled heat. Stopping at golden brown keeps the soup rich rather than acrid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, turnip, butter, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, turnip, butter, 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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