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To Stew Onions

A dish of onions simmered in broth, thickened with butter, cream, and flour, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

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

  1. Place the onions in a large pan with a lid, ensuring they are not stacked on top of each other.

  2. Cover the onions with broth or gravy and simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Halfway through, turn the onions upside down.

  4. Once cooked, transfer the onions to a deep dish.

  5. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  6. Thicken the gravy with butter, cream, and flour, and simmer for 2-3 minutes before pouring over the onions.

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

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

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

Small onions
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a tender, sweet texture during slow simmering.
Broth or gravy
Provides moisture and savory flavor as the onions simmer.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the finished gravy.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the onions.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with butter, cream, and flour. Flour needs to be cooked briefly in the liquid to remove its raw taste and to thicken properly. Simmering for the stated 2-3 minutes helps the starch swell and the gravy become smooth, and adding the cream without boiling it hard helps prevent curdling.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, cream, 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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