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Soubise Sauce

A creamy onion sauce made with butter, onions, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Soubise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Soak the onions in boiling water for 10 minutes.

  2. Peel and cut the onions into halves or quarters.

Cook the onions

  1. In a small saucepan, melt the butter and add the onions.

  2. Simmer the onions very slowly until fully cooked. Add salt to taste.

Finish the sauce

  1. Thicken the sauce with flour and stir in the cream.

  2. Pass the sauce through a sieve until smooth.

  3. Serve with mutton cutlets.

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 + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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
Form the sauce's body and, cooked slowly, add mild sweetness.
Butter
Carries the onions' flavour and gives the sauce richness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the back of a spoon.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture.

The step that matters

Simmer the onions very slowly until fully cooked. Low, gentle heat softens the onions and draws out their sweetness without browning. Higher heat can scorch the butter and onions, giving a bitter, dark sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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