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Onion Sauce

A sauce made from boiled onions simmered in butter, seasoned with salt, optionally finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions and soak them in salted water for 15 minutes to preserve their whiteness.

  2. Place the onions in a saucepan, cover with water, and boil until tender, changing the water if they are very strong.

  3. Drain the onions thoroughly, chop them, and rub through a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pot, make 1 pint of drawn butter and bring it to a boil.

  2. Add the onions to the boiling butter, season with salt, and stir until it simmers.

  3. For a milder flavor, use Spanish onions and add cream just before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce with roast shoulder of mutton or broiled rabbit.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

White onions
Provide the main body and sweet, mild flavor of the sauce once cooked and sieved.
Drawn butter
Supplies fat and richness, carrying the onion flavor and giving the sauce its smooth body.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, milder finish when stirred in just before serving.

The step that matters

Rubbing the onions through a sieve and stirring them into the butter. Onions that are not drained well or are left too coarse can thin or grain the sauce, so draining thoroughly and sieving gives a smooth, cohesive texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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.

More onion sauce recipes

Brown 49White 27Sage 9Young 8Spanish 5Fried 3 See all 175 →

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