Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Onions En Puree
Ingredients
Directions
Scald the onions in boiling water to reduce their strong taste.
Slice the onions and brown them slightly in butter.
Simmer the onions off the heat until almost melted.
Pass the onions through a fine sieve.
Mix the onion pulp in a saucepan with milk and grate in a lump of sugar.
Stir over the heat until you achieve a puree of the desired consistency.
Serve on fried toast or as a garnish for a suitable entree.
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.
-
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
-
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together42,912 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
-
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
-
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
-
Onion + milktop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,418 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, sugar):
- Potatofits better
- Sweet potatofits better
- Capsicumfits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
You might also like
Tomato Soup526 recipes
Brown Bread461 recipes
Mutton Broth292 recipes
Yorkshire Pudding264 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.