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Cheese and Onions

Cheese and onions is a simple sauce made by boiling onions in water, adding cheese, and serving with bread or toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,849 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cheese and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the onion finely.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the onion and water. Boil until only ¼ cup of water remains.

Make the dip

  1. Cut the cheese into pieces and add it to the saucepan.

  2. Stir until the cheese is thoroughly melted.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot plate with bread or dry toast.

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. Cheese + oniontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,849 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

Cheese
Melts into a smooth, creamy base that gives the dip its body and flavour.
Spanish onion
Softens while simmering and adds sweetness and aroma to the dip.
Water
Moistens the onion and helps it soften as the liquid reduces.

The step that matters

Boil until only ¼ cup of water remains. Reducing the water concentrates the onion flavour and leaves the right liquid level so the cheese melts smoothly rather than turning greasy or thin.

“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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