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Onions in Cheese Sauce

A dish of boiled Spanish onions topped with a creamy white sauce, cheese, mustard, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Onions in Cheese Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the Spanish onions until tender.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Combine the creamy white sauce, cheese, mustard, pepper, and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Stir over medium heat until the cheese is dissolved.

Serve

  1. Place the boiled onions on a serving dish and pour the cheese sauce over them.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sauce + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Spanish onions
Form the main body of the dish, becoming soft and sweet when boiled until tender.
Creamy white sauce
Provides a smooth, rich base that carries the cheese and coats the onions.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce to add richness, flavour and a creamy texture.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, savoury note that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Stir the cheese sauce over medium heat until the cheese is dissolved. Cheese proteins can turn grainy or stringy if overheated or heated too fast, so gentle, steady heat helps the cheese melt evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, cheese, mustard, pepper):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, cheese, mustard, pepper. 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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