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Soup

Onion Soup with Milk

A creamy onion soup made with milk, onions, and a roux of flour and fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Onion Soup with Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup base

  1. In a stew pan, heat the dripping or lard over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onions and cook until they are brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook for another minute.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour in the boiling milk and add salt and pepper.

  2. If using, add any cold cooked vegetables.

  3. Bring to a boil once or twice, then serve hot.

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

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

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Browned slowly, they build the savory, sweet flavour base of the soup.
Flour
Cooked with the fat, it thickens the milk into a smooth, body-rich soup.
Milk
Forms the liquid base, adding creaminess and a mild sweetness as it heats.
Dripping or lard
Fat that carries the onion flavour and helps the onions brown.

The step that matters

Browning the onions. Cooking the onions until brown develops deep flavour through caramelisation. Pale onions give a flat soup, and the flour must cook briefly to lose its raw taste before the milk goes in.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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