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Onion Soup with Cheese

A hearty soup made with lean meat, ham, celery, onions, and topped with cheese and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Onion Soup with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Fry the ham in a soup kettle until all the fat is rendered.

  2. Add the soup meat and brown on all sides.

  3. Pour in the cold water and add the celery; simmer for 4 hours.

  4. Remove from heat, let cool, skim off grease, and strain the stock.

  5. Season the stock with salt and pepper.

Finish the soup

  1. In a separate pan, fry the sliced onions in butter until they are a delicate pink color.

  2. Add the fried onions to the soup stock and simmer for another 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. For each serving, place a slice of toasted bread in a bowl.

  2. Pour the soup over the bread.

  3. Sprinkle with grated cheese mixed with the grated yolk of a hard-boiled egg and paprika.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Soup meat
Gives the stock its meaty flavor and body as it simmers for hours.
Onions
Frying them in butter adds sweetness and savory depth to the soup.
Butter
Fat for frying the onions, adding richness and browning flavor.
Cheese
Melts over the hot soup and bread, adding richness and savory flavor.
Bread
Soaks up the hot broth and gives the dish a sturdy base.

The step that matters

Skim the stock after cooling. Fat rises and solidifies as the stock cools, so skimming it off removes greasiness and leaves a cleaner-tasting broth.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, ham, onion, butter, cheese, bread, egg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, ham, onion, butter, cheese, bread, egg. 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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