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Sauce

Creole Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with celery, green pepper, onion, flour, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Creole Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a hot skillet.

  2. Add the chopped onion and cook until brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and chopped green pepper.

  4. Add the tomato soup and cook until thickened.

  5. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper to taste.

Prepare the pepper

  1. For best flavor, soak the green pepper in boiling water for 10 minutes before chopping.

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. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomato soup
Forms the base of the sauce and provides its main liquid and flavor.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and helps the onion brown in the skillet.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the tomato soup.
Onion
Adds savory depth and sweetness as it browns.
Green pepper
Adds fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavor and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the onion until brown. Browning the onion in butter develops sweet, savory flavors through the Maillard reaction. Pale onion leaves the sauce tasting flat and raw.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, flour, onion, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, flour, onion, butter. 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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