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Onion Soup

A veal broth flavored with onions, turnip, parsnip, celery, mace, salt, pepper, sugar, flour, butter, and milk.

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 broth

  1. Place the knuckle of veal in a pot with 2 quarts of cold water and bring to a boil.

  2. Cook for 1 hour.

  3. Peel and chop the onions, then soak them in cold water for 1 hour.

  4. Chop the turnip, parsnip, and celery into small pieces and add them to the pot with the veal.

  5. Add the mace, salt, pepper, and sugar.

  6. Let the mixture boil for 2 hours.

Finish the soup

  1. Strain the soup, rubbing the onions through the strainer back into the pot.

  2. Mix the butter and flour together, then add to the soup along with the milk.

  3. Stir until it boils.

  4. Allow the soup to boil for 5 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsnip + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together561 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Veal knuckle
Releases gelatin and savory flavor into the broth as it simmers.
Onions
Rubbed through the strainer, they thicken the soup and add sweetness and body.
Flour
Combined with butter, it thickens the soup to a smooth, creamy body.
Milk
Adds richness and a mellow, creamy texture to the finished soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and with flour helps form the thickening roux.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Mixing it with butter first coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly and thicken smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, turnip, parsnip, celery, pepper, sugar. 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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