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
Boil the onions in five different waters until they are tender.
Remove the skins from the onions.
Pass the onions through a colander.
Mix the melted butter with the onions.
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
- Provide the bulk and body of the sauce, and mild sweetness once cooked.
- Melted butter
- Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
The step that matters
Boil the onions until fully tender. Onions that are not cooked through stay firm and fibrous, so they will not pass smoothly through a colander and the sauce will be grainy. Cooking until soft breaks down their cell walls, giving a smooth purée.
“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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