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Creole Soup

A tomato-based soup with green pepper, onion, butter, flour, horseradish, and lemon juice, simmered in white stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Creole Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a pan, cook the chopped onion in butter over low heat until it changes color.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until nicely browned.

  3. Gradually add the strained tomato and white stock, stirring continuously.

  4. Simmer for 20 minutes, then season to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the grated horseradish and lemon juice.

  2. Strain the soup and serve immediately.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  5. Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 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 onion so it softens and browns gently, adding richness to the base.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter and onion, giving body to the liquid.
Strained tomato
Provides the main liquid and tomato flavour, with acidity that balances the richness.
Rich white stock
Forms the main body of the soup, carrying flavour and moisture through the dish.
Grated horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma and heat that lifts the soup at the end.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour until nicely browned. Cooking the flour in butter until it browns develops a nutty flavour and removes raw starch taste. Cooking too briefly leaves a pasty flavour, while too long can taste bitter and weaken thickening.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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