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White Onion Soup

A soup of onions, broth, French roll, egg yolks, cream, and optional greens, garnished with bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and spinach are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,400 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. 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. Add half of the sliced French roll to the broth.

  3. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the cream until well combined.

  4. Stir the egg mixture into the broth to prevent curdling.

Thicken and serve

  1. Once the eggs are incorporated and the soup is thickened, pour it over the remaining French roll slices in a soup dish.

  2. 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. Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Onion + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + spinachtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they stew, giving the soup its body and flavor.
French roll
Absorbs liquid and thickens the soup, adding body to the broth.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup as they set with gentle heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the broth. Egg yolks can curdle if they meet hot liquid too quickly. Stirring the mixture in gradually and keeping the heat gentle lets the yolks thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, egg, cream, pepper, bread):

  1. Spinachthe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, egg, cream, pepper, bread. 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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