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Sauce

Sauce Soubise

A creamy onion sauce made with butter, onions, and Velouté or flour‑cream mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Sauce Soubise

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sauce Soubise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the onion base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the minced onions and cook until soft.

Thicken and finish

  1. If using flour, mix it with the cream to create a smooth mixture.

  2. Add the Velouté or the flour‑cream mixture to the onions.

  3. Squeeze the mixture through a fine sieve to obtain a pulp.

  4. Return the pulp to the sauce, stirring continuously until thick.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. 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 bulk and sweet flavour that forms the base of the sauce.
Butter
Cooks the onions gently and adds richness and fat to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when used in place of Velouté, giving body to the pulp.

The step that matters

Return the pulp to the sauce, stirring continuously until thick. Constant stirring keeps the starch from settling and scorching on the pan base, so the sauce thickens evenly and stays smooth.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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