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Creamed Onions

Creamed onions are onions cooked in a butter, flour, and cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Creamed Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions and place them in cold water.

  2. Boil salted water, then simmer the onions for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the onions and place them in a baking dish.

  4. Sprinkle the onions with salt and pepper and cover them with boiling water.

  5. Bake the onions for 1 hour.

  6. Check that the onions are tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Lift the onions into a hot dish.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and flour.

  3. Add the water from the baked onions to the saucepan and stir until boiling.

  4. Beat the egg yolks with the sweet cream.

  5. Stir the egg yolk mixture into the sauce and cook for 3 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the onions and serve immediately.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 main body of the dish and soften into a tender base for the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the flour form a smooth, stable roux.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they gently set with heat.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolk mixture into the sauce and cook for 3 minutes. Egg yolks can curdle if the sauce is too hot when they go in. Adding them gradually and cooking gently lets them thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, egg, 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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