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Onion Stew

Onion stew is a dish of sliced onions boiled and simmered with milk, butter, salt, pepper, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Onion Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and slice the onions, then soak them in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Boil the onions in fresh cold water for 3 minutes, then drain.

  3. Repeat boiling the onions in fresh water two more times.

  4. In the fourth batch of water, cook the onions until tender, then strain.

Finish the stew

  1. Add milk, butter, salt, and pepper to the strained onions.

  2. Thicken the mixture with flour, stirring until smooth.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Form the main body of the stew and, once cooked, give it sweetness and soft texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the stew liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the stew becomes smooth and body-rich.

The step that matters

Boiling the onions in several changes of water. Repeated boiling in fresh water draws out sharp sulfur compounds that cause bitterness and harshness. Skipping or shortening these batches leaves the onions tasting harsh, so the stew's sweetness depends on this step.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, pepper, flour. 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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