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Sauce

Sauce Soubise

A creamy onion sauce made by boiling onions, sautéing, mashing, and mixing with cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Sauce Soubise

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 ↓

Sauce Soubise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Boil the onions in water for about 20 minutes until tender.

  2. Drain the onions thoroughly.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the onions, cooking until slightly yellow.

  2. Stir in a pinch of salt, sugar, and white pepper.

  3. Mash the onions through a coarse sieve.

  4. Mix in an equal amount of Cream Sauce and serve immediately with meats.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 flavour of the sauce once cooked and mashed.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while the onions soften and turn slightly yellow.
Cream sauce
Supplies liquid and creaminess, giving the sauce a smooth, pourable texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the onions in butter until slightly yellow. Cooking too briefly leaves a raw, harsh onion taste, while cooking too hard can brown and bitter the flavour. Gentle cooking softens the onions and develops their natural sweetness.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, sugar, cream, sauce. 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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