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Creole Soup

A tomato-based Creole soup with rice, carrots, turnip, onions, herbs, and spices, simmered slowly and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Creole Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Slice the onion and fry it brown in the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Wash the tomatoes and break them by hand.

  3. Add them to the onion.

  4. Peel and slice the carrot and turnip.

  5. Add them to the tomatoes along with the parsley, thyme, marjoram, bay leaves, mace, and cloves.

  6. Add the boiling water.

Simmer and strain

  1. Simmer slowly for two hours.

  2. Rub the vegetables through a sieve.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. If the soup is thick, add a little boiling water or broth.

Add rice and serve

  1. Boil the rice in salted boiling water until soft but not broken.

  2. Drain the rice and keep warm.

  3. Stir in the rice.

  4. Simmer for fifteen minutes.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the main body and acidic, sweet flavour of the soup.
Butter
Fat that browns the onion, adding richness and savoury flavour.
Onion
Browned in butter to build a deeper, savoury base flavour.
Rice
Adds body and soft texture as it cooks in the soup.
Carrot
Contributes natural sweetness and body once rubbed through the sieve.
Turnip
Adds earthy flavour and body once rubbed through the sieve.

The step that matters

Rubbing the vegetables through a sieve. Pressing cooked vegetables through a sieve breaks down their cell walls and fibres, giving the soup a smooth, thickened texture. Pushing too hard or skipping the step leaves it grainy or thin.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, rice, carrot, turnip, onion, parsley, thyme):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rice, carrot, turnip, onion, parsley, thyme. 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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