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Onion Soup

A hearty soup made with veal or beef stock, onions, root vegetables, ham, egg yolks, cream, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Stew the stock, onions, turnips, parsnip, carrots, celery, sweet herbs, white pepper, salt, and ham in a large pot until tender.

  2. Press the mixture through a fine sieve and let the soup cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Pound the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs and mix them with the thick cream.

  2. Stir the egg and cream mixture into the soup and heat gently, avoiding boiling.

  3. Toast the piece of bread and place it in the soup before serving.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Provide the main body and sweet, savoury flavour as they soften in the stock.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Thicken the soup and add richness when heated gently with the cream.
Thick cream
Adds fat and a smooth, rounded texture to the finished soup.
Veal or beef stock
Forms the liquid base that carries all the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Heat the egg and cream mixture gently. Egg yolks thicken at moderate heat but curdle and turn grainy if the soup boils, so the soup must be kept just below boiling once the mixture is added.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, turnip, parsnip, carrot, celery, ham):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, turnip, parsnip, carrot, celery, ham. 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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