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Onion Soup

A savory soup made with onions, turnips, celery, butter, water, herring or anchovies, spices, bread crumbs, milk, and optional egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a large pot, fry the sliced onions, turnips, and celery in butter until browned but not burnt.

  2. Add the vegetables to boiling water along with the herring or anchovies, anchovy sauce, mace, allspice, pepper, and salt.

  3. Let the mixture stew until the vegetables are tender enough to pulp.

Thicken and serve

  1. Boil the crumb of the French rolls in milk, then pass through a colander with the vegetables.

  2. Return the mixture to the heat and stew until hot.

  3. If not thick enough, stir in the beaten egg yolks just before serving.

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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together445 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Browned onions build deep, savoury flavour as they caramelise in the butter.
Butter
Fat for frying that carries flavour and helps the vegetables brown.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury body to the vegetable base as it softens and pulps.
French rolls
Crumb boiled in milk thickens the soup and gives it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup when stirred in just before serving.

The step that matters

Frying the vegetables. Browning the onions, turnips and celery gives deep flavour, but burnt pieces turn bitter and taint the whole pot, so heat must be controlled.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, turnip, celery, butter, anchovy, allspice, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, turnip, celery, butter, anchovy, allspice, 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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