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Sauce

White Onion Sauce

A creamy 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) · 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 ↓

White Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and halve the onions.

  2. Soak them in spring water for 15 minutes.

  3. Boil the onions in water for 15 minutes.

  4. If a milder taste is desired, pour off the water and cover with fresh boiling water.

  5. Boil until tender, which may take up to 45 minutes.

  6. Drain the onions well and chop them finely.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Stir in cream or milk and heat until boiling.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve, adding more cream or milk 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
Provide the main bulk and sweet, mellow flavour that forms the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Cream or milk
Adds liquid and creaminess, and can be added to adjust the final consistency.

The step that matters

Boil the onions until tender. Onions must be fully softened before sieving, or the purée will be coarse and harsh. Boiling in fresh water also draws out sharpness, so the milder taste comes through.

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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