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Onion Sauce

A sauce made from boiled onions, milk, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions.

  2. Place the peeled onions in a pot with cold water, bring the water to a boil, then drain the onions and refill the pot with fresh hot water.

  3. Repeat the boiling and draining if necessary to reduce the onion's strength.

Cook the onions

  1. Boil the onions in a mixture of milk and water until soft.

  2. Squeeze the onions between two plates.

  3. Chop the onions finely or rub them through a coarse sieve.

Finish the sauce

  1. Mix in melted butter and cream or milk.

  2. Add pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

White onions
Provide the main body and sweet flavour of the sauce once softened and puréed.
Milk
Adds richness and mellows the onion flavour as it simmers with the onions.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel and a rounded flavour.
Cream or milk
Thins the sauce and adds creamy richness to the finished texture.

The step that matters

Boiling and draining the onions. Onions release sharp sulfur compounds when cut or cooked. Repeated boiling in fresh water leaches out some of these harsh compounds, so the sauce tastes mild and sweet rather than pungent.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

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

More onion sauce recipes

Brown 49White 27Sage 9Young 8Spanish 5Fried 3 See all 175 →

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