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Sauce

White Onion Sauce

A sauce made from boiled onions, milk, butter, and flour, served over rabbit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

White Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Boil the onions in hot water for 15 minutes.

  2. Transfer to fresh hot water and boil gently until tender.

  3. Peel the onions, cut out the roots, and squeeze them dry between two plates.

  4. Press the onions through a colander or chop them finely.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter with the milk and flour, stirring until it boils.

  2. Add the onions to the melted butter and stir until smooth and hot.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce in a tureen, pouring a tablespoonful over each rabbit if desired.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Onions
Provide the main body and sweet, mild flavour of the sauce once softened and pressed.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and gives the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds creaminess.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter so the onions are held in a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the melted butter, milk and flour until it boils. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid fat and milk while stirred, or it stays lumpy and fails to thicken the sauce smoothly. Stirring prevents scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour. 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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