Skip to main content
Sauce

Sauce, Soubise

A creamy onion sauce made with bechamel, cream, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Sauce, Soubise

Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sauce, Soubise

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Blanch the onions as in Onion Sauce, then slice them.

  2. Boil the sliced onions in the stock until nearly done.

  3. Add the bechamel and cook until the onions are tender.

  4. Sieve the sauce and reheat it with the cream.

  5. Season to taste and 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Onion + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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 main body and sweet, mellow flavour of the sauce once softened.
Thick bechamel
Gives the sauce its body and thickness, coating the onions as they cook.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture when reheated into the sauce.
White stock
Cooks the onions and adds savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Sieve the sauce and reheat it with the cream. Sieving breaks down and removes onion fibres so the sauce is smooth. Reheating gently after adding cream keeps it from boiling, which can cause the cream to split or curdle.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, veal, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes