Soubise sauce is an

onion sauce Onion sauce is a culinary sauce that uses onion as its primary ingredient. Some onion sauces may use several types of onions in their preparation. Some onion sauces are brown in color, while others are white. Many various ingredients may be use ...

thickened with

Béchamel sauce Bechamel sauce ( ) is a sauce traditionally made from a white roux (butter and flour in a 1:1 mixture by weight) and milk. Bechamel may also be referred to as besciamella (Italy), besamel (Greece), or white sauce (U.S.). French, Italian and Greek ...

, pounded cooked rice, or cream.James Peterson, ''Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making'', 4th ed., 2017, , p. 520 It is generally served with meats, game, poultry and vegetables. It was formerly often used to coat meat. It is first documented in 1836. It has many variations, the simplest including just onions, butter, and cream.

History

The sauce is said to take its name from

Charles de Rohan, Prince de Soubise Charles de Rohan (16 July 17151 July 1787), Prince of Soubise, Duke of Rohan-Rohan, Seigneur of Roberval, and Marshal of France from 1758, was a soldier, and minister to kings Louis XV and Louis XVI. He was the last male of his branch of the Hou ...

Auguste Escoffier Georges Auguste Escoffier (; 28 October 1846 – 12 February 1935) was a French chef, restaurateur and culinary writer who popularized and updated traditional French cooking methods. Much of Escoffier's technique was based on that of Marie-Antoi ...

's recipe adds a thickened béchamel to butter-stewed onions. For a variant with rice and bacon fat, Escoffier cooks a high starch rice (such as

Carolina rice Carolina may refer to: Geography * The Carolinas, the U.S. states of North and South Carolina ** North Carolina, a U.S. state ** South Carolina, a U.S. state * Province of Carolina, a British province until 1712 * Carolina, Alabama, a town in t ...

) with fatty bacon, onions and white

consommé In cooking, a consommé is a type of clear soup made from richly flavoured stock or broth that has been clarified, a process that uses egg whites to remove fat and sediment. Consommé has three English pronunciations: traditionally in the UK, t ...

, then purées the onions and rice before finishing with the usual butter and cream.

Tomato The tomato is the edible berry of the plant ''Solanum lycopersicum'', commonly known as the tomato plant. The species originated in western South America, Mexico, and Central America. The Mexican Nahuatl word gave rise to the Spanish word ...

purée seasoned with paprika or curry can be added to either variation, but Escoffier notes that béchamel is preferred to rice for its smoother consistency. The 19th-century Anglo-Italian cook

Charles Elmé Francatelli Charles Elmé Francatelli (180510 August 1876) was an Italian British cook, known for his cookery books popular in the Victorian era, such as ''The Modern Cook''. Biography Francatelli was born in London, of Italian descent, in 1805. He was ed ...

serves the sauce over boiled

pheasant Pheasants ( ) are birds of several genera within the family (biology), family Phasianidae in the order (biology), order Galliformes. Although they can be found all over the world in introduced (and captive) populations, the pheasant genera na ...

with potato

croquettes A croquette is a deep-fried roll consisting of a thick binder combined with a filling, which is breaded and deep-fried; it is served as a side dish, a snack, or fast food worldwide. The binder is typically a thick béchamel or brown sauce, m ...

Eliza Acton Eliza Acton (17 April 1799 – 13 February 1859) was an English food writer and poet who produced one of Britain's first cookery books aimed at the domestic reader, ''Modern Cookery for Private Families''. The book introduced the now-univ ...

, who said ''soubise'' was "the finest kind of onion sauce", serves it with lamb, suggesting any rich gravy or brown cucumber sauce as a substitute. It is among the sauces she recommends to be served with Veal Fricandeau. Her recipe for English soubise replaces the béchamel with rich veal gravy finished with cream.

References

White sauces Victorian cuisine Onion-based foods {{condiment-stub