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Sauce

Soubise Sauce

A French sauce made from onions, butter, flour, potatoes, stock, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Soubise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the onion base

  1. Peel and slice the onions.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the onions, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cover the saucepan and cook on low heat until the onions are soft but not browned.

Finish and hold

  1. Add the flour and mashed potatoes, then pour in the stock and cream.

  2. Stir over heat for 15 minutes, then pass through a sieve.

  3. Keep warm in a bain-marie until ready to 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 + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

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

Onions
Provide the bulk and sweet flavour that forms the body of the sauce.
Butter
Softens the onions in fat and carries flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by binding with the liquid as it heats.
Mealy potatoes
Add starch and body, helping the sauce thicken and turn smooth.
Stock
Forms the main liquid and adds savoury depth.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cook the onions low and slow without browning. Browned onions develop bitter, caramelised notes that change the pale, delicate flavour of a soubise. Gentle heat under a lid softens them through steam so they become sweet and tender without colouring.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, flour, potato, 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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