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Onion Souffle

A baked onion mixture with bread crumbs, butter, salt, pepper, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the cooked onion finely or rub it through a coarse strainer.

  2. Combine the onion with an equal quantity of soft bread crumbs or half as many dry ones.

  3. Season the mixture with butter, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

Add the eggs and bake

  1. For each ½ cup of the mixture, beat in one egg yolk and fold in one stiffly beaten egg white.

  2. Place the mixture in small dishes or onion cases.

  3. Bake gently at 350°F (175°C) until firm.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked onion
Provides the main flavour and bulk of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture body so it holds its shape.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the mixture as it sets.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it lightens the mixture and helps it rise and set airy.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg white. Egg white is what makes the dish light. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whites, while overmixing deflates them and leaves a denser result after baking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, pepper, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, 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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