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Creole Soup

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

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 flour and gradually stir in the brown stock, then add the tomatoes.

  3. Simmer for 15 minutes.

  4. Press the mixture through a strainer, season with salt, pepper, and cayenne, then 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. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and colour of the soup base.
Brown stock
Supplies the liquid that forms the soup and carries the flavour.
Macaroni
Adds bulk and a soft, chewy texture to the finished soup.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma and bite.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the stock and tomato mixture slightly as it is stirred in.

The step that matters

Adding the horseradish and vinegar just before serving. Horseradish loses its sharp pungency and aroma when heated for long, and vinegar's brightness fades with extended cooking. Adding them at the end keeps the soup tasting fresh and bite-forward.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cabbagefits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, 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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