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Creole Soup

A tomato-based soup with green peppers, onions, horseradish, and macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 soup

  1. Cook the green peppers and onion in fat for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the flour and gradually stir in the brown stock.

  3. Add the tomatoes and simmer for 15 minutes.

  4. Press the mixture through a strainer, season with cayenne, and reheat.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add the horseradish, vinegar, and previously cooked macaroni cut into rings.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Flour + horseradishtop 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

Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, body-rich soup as it cooks.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and colour of the soup base.
Brown stock
Supplies the liquid base and savoury flavour for the soup.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma when cooked gently in fat at the start.
Macaroni
Adds starchy bulk and texture as cut rings in the finished soup.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent bite that fades with heat, so it is added last.

The step that matters

Add the horseradish just before serving. Horseradish's pungent heat compounds are volatile and fade with prolonged cooking, so adding it late keeps its sharp bite in the finished soup.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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