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To Stew Onions

A stew of onions simmered in veal stock with butter, flour, pepper, salt, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

To Stew Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the onions and place them in a pot with veal stock.

  2. Roll butter in flour.

  3. Add the butter and flour mixture to the pot along with white pepper and salt.

  4. Stew gently for 1 hour.

  5. Just before serving, mix in the cream.

Alternative brown sauce

  1. For a brown sauce, brown butter and flour in a stew pan until light.

  2. Add gravy and onions, season with pepper and salt, and stew gently for 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  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
Form the body of the stew and soften into a sweet, tender base as they cook.
Veal stock
Provides the liquid and savory flavor that the stew simmers in.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the liquid into a sauce, and the butter carries richness and flavor.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, milder texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 1 hour. A gentle simmer lets the onions soften and release their sweetness without breaking down or scorching. A vigorous boil can break the flour-thickened sauce and make it grainy or uneven.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, veal, butter, flour, 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.

More onion stew recipes

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