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Sauce Soubise

A creamy onion sauce made with sautéed onions, butter, sugar, salt, white pepper, and cream.

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. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the onions and stew until slightly yellow.

  3. Add a pinch of salt, sugar, and white pepper.

  4. Mash the onions through a coarse sieve.

  5. Mix in an equal amount of rich 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, mild flavour of the sauce once mashed.
Butter
Adds richness and gently browns the onions as they stew.
Cream sauce
Adds creaminess and smooth body, diluting the onion purée into a pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the onions until only slightly yellow. Cooking onions gently in butter draws out sweetness without deep browning. Overcooking turns them bitter and dark, which changes the flavour and colour of the white sauce.

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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