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White Onion Soup

A soup of onions in broth with a French roll, egg yolks, cream, and boiled onion garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,827 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

White Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, stew the chopped onions in the broth over gentle heat.

  2. Slice the French roll and place half in the broth and the rest at the bottom of the soup dish.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with the cream and stir into the soup to prevent curdling.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once the eggs are incorporated and cooked, pour the soup over the roll in the dish.

  2. Garnish with small boiled onions and serve.

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

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

  2. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Onion + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,333 recipes

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

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

Strong broth
Forms the liquid base and gives the soup its savoury flavour and body.
Onions
Slow stewing softens them and brings out their natural sweetness.
French roll
Soaks up the broth, giving the dish a soft, bread-based structure.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the soup as they gently cook.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth texture, and helps protect the eggs from curdling.

The step that matters

Adding the egg and cream mixture. Egg yolks thicken when warmed but curdle if they overheat or meet hot liquid unmixed. Stirring the beaten yolks and cream into the soup gradually, over gentle heat, lets them thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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