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Creamed Onions

Creamed onions are onions simmered in a sauce of milk, flour, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Creamed Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the onions

  1. Peel the onions.

  2. Cover them with boiling water.

  3. Add sugar and boil until nearly done.

  4. Add salt.

  5. Drain the onions.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix flour with cold milk and egg yolk.

  2. Add hot milk.

  3. Stir over heat until nearly boiling.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Add butter, salt, and cayenne to the mixture.

  6. Stir in cream.

Serve

  1. Place them in a hot dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over the onions.

  3. Serve.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Onions
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender as they cook and absorb the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a rich, creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, providing moisture and body.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the sauce, rounding out its richness.

The step that matters

Stir over heat until nearly boiling. Flour and egg yolk thicken the sauce only when heated gently while stirred. Stirring keeps the mixture smooth and prevents lumps, while overheating or boiling too hard can curdle the egg yolk and make the sauce grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, milk, egg, butter, cream):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, milk, egg, butter, 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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