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Potage Aux Oignons Blancs, or White Onion Soup

A creamy soup made from white onions, consomme, butter, and cream, served with boiled onions and French roll crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potage Aux Oignons Blancs, or White Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and cut the onions in half in a basin of water.

  2. Half boil and skim the onions in a pot of water with salt.

  3. Transfer the onions to boiling water until cooked, then drain.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, melt the butter and stir in the onions until the butter begins to fry.

  2. Add the consomme and plain sauce, stirring until well mixed.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve, adding strong consomme and cream.

  4. Season with salt to taste and let it simmer gently for one hour.

Serve

  1. Before serving, add small boiled onions and crusts of French rolls to the tureen, then pour the soup over them.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Large onions
Form the bulk of the soup, softening into a sweet, mellow base as they simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour as it fries the onions, helping them brown lightly.
Consomme
Supplies a clear, savoury meat stock that gives the soup its depth of flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.
French rolls
Their crusts sit in the tureen and soak up soup, adding bread texture.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve. Pressing the cooked onions through a sieve breaks down their fibres to create a smooth, even texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy or lumpy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Onionthe original
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, cream. 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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