Name: Onions, with Cream
Ingredients: 12 medium-sized onions; salted water; bouquet (herbs); ½ pint cream sauce; 2 tablespoons broth

Why it works: Cream and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Onions, with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

Peel the onions and trim the roots without cutting them.
Place the onions in a saucepan and cover with salted water.

Cook

Add the bouquet and cook for 45 minutes.

Serve

Lift the onions from the saucepan and place them on a dish.
Cover the onions with the cream sauce mixed with the broth and serve.

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.

Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,827 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,474 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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: Main vegetable; cooking softens them until tender and sweet.
Cream sauce: Adds richness and a creamy coating that carries the dish's flavour.
Broth: Adds savoury flavour and moisture to the cream sauce.