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Soup

White Onion Soup

A broth-based soup with sautéed onions, bread, and a custard made from egg yolks and cream, garnished with boiled onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

White Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, stew the chopped onions in the broth over gentle heat.

  2. Slice the French roll and place half in the broth and the rest at the bottom of the soup dish.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with the cream and stir them into the broth to prevent curdling.

  4. Once the eggs are well incorporated, pour the mixture over the roll slices in the dish.

Serve

  1. Garnish with small boiled onions 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.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

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
Stewed in the broth, they give the soup its sweet, savory body and flavor.
Egg yolks
Thicken the broth into a smooth, rich custard-like texture as they set gently with heat.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the texture and helping the yolks blend in smoothly.
French roll
Soaks up the broth and gives the soup a soft, bread-based body.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg-cream mixture into the broth. Egg yolks can curdle when they meet hot liquid too quickly. Stirring the cream mixture in gradually and keeping the heat gentle helps the yolks blend evenly and keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, 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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