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Creole Soup

A hearty soup made with meat, bones, tomatoes, peppers, onions, horseradish, vinegar, macaroni, and a thickening paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Creole Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Make stock with meat, bones, red pepper, salt, and cold water.

Build the soup

  1. Cook green peppers and onions in butter for five minutes.

  2. Add the cooked mixture to the stock.

  3. Add tomatoes, vinegar, horseradish, and macaroni to the soup.

  4. Boil gently for forty minutes.

  5. Make a thin paste with flour and a little cold water.

  6. Add the paste to the soup.

  7. Boil for five minutes.

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. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 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

Meat and bones
Give the stock its body and rich meaty flavor as they simmer.
Butter
Softens the peppers and onions and carries their flavor into the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as the thin paste cooks into the liquid.
Macaroni
Adds starchy bulk and body, becoming tender as the soup simmers.
Tomatoes
Add acidity, body and a fresh tomato flavor to the soup.

The step that matters

Add the flour paste to the soup. Flour lumps if added as dry powder, so mixing it into a thin paste with cold water first lets it disperse evenly. Boiling afterward cooks out the raw starch taste and thickens the soup smoothly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, onion, horseradish, vinegar, butter, flour):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, onion, horseradish, vinegar, butter, flour. 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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