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Sauce

White Onion Sauce

A sauce made from boiled white onions, butter, flour, salt, and cream or milk.

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 ↓

White Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions.

  2. Halve the onions.

  3. Soak the onions in spring water for 15 minutes.

  4. Boil the onions in water for 15 minutes. Drain the onions.

  5. Cover with fresh boiling water. Continue boiling until tender, up to 45 minutes.

  6. Drain the onions well.

  7. Chop the onions.

  8. Bruise the onions on a cutting board.

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the onions with butter, flour, and salt.

  2. Stir in cream or milk until it boils.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve to achieve desired consistency.

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

White onions
Form the bulk of the sauce, providing its flavour and body once cooked and sieved.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce, giving it body as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, loosening the sauce to the desired consistency.

The step that matters

Continue boiling until tender. Onions must be fully softened before sieving; undercooked pieces will not pass smoothly through the sieve and leave a grainy, uneven sauce. Check tenderness rather than relying only on the time.

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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