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Soup

Creole Soup

A thickened soup of green peppers, onions, tomatoes, and macaroni, seasoned with salt, pepper, cayenne, horseradish, and vinegar.

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

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

  2. Add flour and blend thoroughly.

  3. Add the brown stock and tomatoes. Simmer for 15 minutes.

  4. Press the mixture through a sieve.

  5. Season to taste. Reheat.

  6. Add horseradish. Add vinegar.

  7. Add 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

Butter
Fats the vegetables as they cook, carrying flavor and keeping them from sticking.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a body-rich soup as it blends with the fat and liquid.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the other flavors.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent bite that brightens the soup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the butter and flour.
Macaroni
Adds bulk and a soft, starchy texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Press the mixture through a sieve. Pressing softened vegetables through a sieve breaks them down so the soup becomes smooth and evenly thick; skipping or rushing it leaves lumps and coarse pieces.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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