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Sauce

Onion Sauce

A creamy sauce made from boiled onions, butter, salt, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Boil the large onions in plenty of water until very tender.

  2. Drain the onions in a colander.

  3. Pass the drained onions through the colander with a spoon.

Finish the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the onion puree with a piece of butter, salt, and cream.

  2. Stir over the fire until the sauce thickens.

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. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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

Large onions
Provide the main body and sweetness, and break down into a thick puree when very tender.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture that softens the onion flavour.

The step that matters

Stir over the fire until the sauce thickens. Constant stirring keeps the onion puree and cream from catching on the base of the pan. Cream can scorch or separate if it boils hard, so the heat needs watching until the sauce thickens.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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