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Creole Sauce (Can Campbell's tomato soup)
1 can Campbell's tomato soup. 1/2 onion, minced fine. 1/2 green pepper, cut fine. 1 tablespoon butter.
Put butter in saucepan, add onion, cook a few minutes then add tomato and pepper and when well blended it is ready to use with macaroni.
A three-minute pan sauce built on a can, and the only real decision is how much liquid you want. The recipe never says whether to dilute the soup, and that determines whether you get a sauce or a soup with vegetables in it.
- Use the soup undilutedCampbell's tomato soup was and is sold condensed. Tip it straight from the can without adding the water or milk the label calls for, or the sauce will be too thin to coat macaroni. A standard modern can (around 10 3/4 oz) stands in for the tin the recipe assumes.
- Give the pepper more time"Cook a few minutes" applies to the onion. Green pepper added at the end of a two-minute simmer stays raw and squeaky; put it in with the onion and sweat both in the butter for 6-8 minutes over medium-low heat until soft and not browned.
- "Add tomato" means the soupThere is no fresh tomato in the ingredient list. The instruction is simply telling you to pour in the can at that point.
- Season it yourselfThe recipe assumes the salt in the can is enough. Taste before serving and expect to want salt, black pepper, and, if you like, a pinch of cayenne or a few drops of hot sauce.
- Cut the sweetnessModern condensed tomato soup can taste distinctly sweet. A teaspoon of red wine vinegar or lemon juice at the end brings it back toward a savory sauce.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 cups, enough to dress 8 oz of dry macaroni for two to three people, or to spoon over an omelet or a piece of fried fish.
- If you want it smoothFor a sauce rather than a chunky one, mince the onion and pepper very fine as directed, or blend the finished sauce briefly. Simmer it a further five minutes if you need it thicker.
Mrs. Wilson worked in food conservation during the First World War, and her books are full of recipes that treat commercial products as legitimate pantry staples rather than shortcuts to apologize for. The parenthetical brand name in the title is unusual for a cookbook of the period and reflects the way canned condensed soup, on the American market since the late 1890s, had become a base for household sauces by the 1910s. "Creole" here means only the trio of tomato, onion and green pepper, a shorthand that had drifted a long way north from Louisiana cooking, where a creole sauce would typically involve celery, garlic, often a roux, and a good deal more time. Pairing it with macaroni rather than meat or seafood shows how loosely such regional labels were applied in mainstream American cookbooks of the era.