Why it works: Onion and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Onion Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the onions
Halve the onions and boil them in 3 or 4 pots of water for 5 minutes each.
In the last pot, boil the onions until perfectly tender.
Remove the skins and drain the onions in a fine sieve.
Finish the sauce
Pass the onions through a colander and mix in the melted butter.
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.
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Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together42,912 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Onions
- Form the sauce's body and mild sweetness once softened and passed through a sieve.
- Butter
- Adds fat for a rich flavour and a smoother, glossier texture.
The step that matters
Boil the onions until perfectly tender. Onions that are not fully softened stay fibrous and will not pass smoothly through a sieve or colander, leaving a grainy sauce. Thorough cooking breaks down their cell walls so they purée easily.
“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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