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Onion Soup

A savory soup made from boiled onions, chicken, mace, and cream, served with grated bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and spinach are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,400 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the onions in equal parts milk and water until soft, changing the liquid three times.

  2. Rub the soft onions through a fine sieve.

Add the gravy and finish

  1. Cut the chicken into pieces and boil with the mace for gravy.

  2. Strain the gravy and mix it with the onion pulp.

  3. Add the grated stale bread and cream, then season with salt and cayenne pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve with grated brown bread around the edge of the dish, and optionally add stewed spinach or asparagus.

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. Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Onion + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Spanish onions
Provide the main body and sweetness of the soup once cooked soft and pureed.
Old chicken
Gives a savoury meaty flavour to the gravy that is mixed into the soup.
Stale bread crumb
Thickens the soup as it absorbs liquid and helps give it body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture.

The step that matters

Rubbing the onions through a fine sieve. Onions must be cooked fully soft before pressing, otherwise the pulp stays fibrous and the soup turns out grainy rather than smooth.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, milk, chicken, mace, cream, pepper, bread):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, milk, chicken, mace, cream, pepper, bread. 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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