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Onion Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 stock

  1. Put the knuckle of veal in a pot with 2 quarts of cold water and boil for 1 hour.

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

  3. Chop the turnip, parsnip, and celery, and add them to the pot with the mace, salt, pepper, and sugar.

  4. Boil everything for 2 hours.

Strain and thicken

  1. Strain the soup, rubbing the onions through the strainer.

  2. Return the strained stock to the pot.

  3. Mix the flour with a little water and pour it into the pot, stirring until it boils.

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 water as it simmers, giving the soup body.
Onions
Provide sweetness and flavor, and when rubbed through the strainer they thicken the soup.
Flour
Thickens the stock as its starch swells when heated, giving the soup a smoother body.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavor to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the pot. Flour must be mixed smoothly with a little water first and stirred until the soup boils; otherwise it clumps and does not thicken evenly, because starch only swells properly once heated in liquid.

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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