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To Stew Onions

This dish stews onions in veal stock, butter, flour, white pepper, salt, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

To Stew Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the onions and place them in a pot.

  2. Add veal stock, butter rolled in flour, white pepper, and salt.

  3. Stew gently for 1 hour.

  4. Before serving, mix in the cream.

Brown sauce variation

  1. For a brown sauce, use the same amount of good gravy instead of veal stock.

  2. In a pan, brown butter and flour until light in color.

  3. Add gravy and onions, along with pepper and salt, and stew gently for 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 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

Onions
Become tender and sweet as they stew slowly in the liquid.
Veal stock
Provides the liquid and savory body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and with flour helps thicken the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter before adding liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the finished sauce.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, veal, butter, flour, 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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