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Creole Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with butter, onions, peppers, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Creole Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a skillet.

  2. Add the minced onion and simmer slowly until tender.

  3. Add the chopped green pepper and flour, stirring until smooth but not browned.

  4. Stir in the sieved tomatoes and bring to a boil for 1 minute.

Chill and finish

  1. Remove from heat and chill the sauce.

  2. Once chilled, mix in the chopped sweet pepper and pickle.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness and a rounded flavor to the sauce.
Onion
Softens into sweetness and builds the base aroma as it simmers.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot fat and liquid.
Sieved tomatoes
Provide the main liquid, body, and bright acidity of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour until smooth but not browned. Flour must cook in the fat long enough to lose its raw taste and thicken the sauce. Letting it brown changes the color and flavor, and too much heat can scorch it, so keep the heat moderate and stir constantly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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