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Drink

Onion Soup

A savory soup of onions, turnip, carrots, celery, anchovies, mace, peppercorns, and egg yolks, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Dredge the vegetables with flour and place them in water.

  2. Simmer until the vegetables dissolve.

Cook the soup

  1. Fry the onions, turnip, carrots, and celery in butter until browned.

  2. Add boiling water, anchovies, mace, peppercorns, and salt.

  3. Boil until reduced to a pulp, then strain.

Thicken and serve

  1. Set the strained soup on the fire, skim, and thicken with egg yolks.

  2. Serve with fried bread or a French roll.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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 bulk of the soup's sweetness and deep color when browned in butter.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and its milk solids brown during frying.
Egg yolks
Set into a silky thickness when gently heated in the hot soup.
Anchovies
Add a savory, salty depth that rounds out the vegetable flavors.
Celery
Contributes aromatic flavor to the base, and body as it breaks down.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the base as they break down during boiling.

The step that matters

Thickening with egg yolks. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, but if the soup boils after the yolks go in, they scramble and turn grainy. Keep the soup hot without letting it boil, and stir the yolks in steadily.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, turnip, carrot, celery, butter, bread, egg. 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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