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Another Onion Soup

A veal-based onion soup thickened with milk, butter, and rice flour, finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Another Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil 4 quarts of water with the veal, whole white pepper, and mace until the meat leaves the bone.

  2. Strain off the stock.

  3. Refrigerate the stock overnight.

  4. Remove the fat from the stock.

Prepare the onions

  1. Boil the onions in milk and water until tender.

  2. Pulp the cooked onions through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Bring the stock to a boil.

  2. Add the pulped onions to the stock.

  3. Mix in the butter and rice flour.

  4. Season with salt.

  5. Boil gently for 30 minutes, stirring constantly.

  6. Stir in the rich cream just 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Knuckle of veal
Releases meat flavor and gelatin into the stock, giving the soup its body.
Spanish onions
Provide the main sweetness and flavor, and when pulped they thicken the soup.
Milk
Adds softness and a mild, creamy sweetness to the cooked onions.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Rice flour
Thickens the soup so it has a smooth, lightly body texture.
Rich cream
Adds richness and a silky texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stirring while the soup boils gently. The pulped onions and flour settle and scorch easily on the bottom of the pot. Constant stirring keeps the starch dispersed and prevents burnt flavor and lumps.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, mace, onion, milk, butter, rice, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, mace, onion, milk, butter, rice, flour. 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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