Creole Soup
3 tablespoons green pepper chopped 2 tablespoons onion chopped 1/4 cup savory fat 2 tablespoons flour 1 quart stock 1 pint tomatoes, fresh or canned Salt and pepper 2 tablespoons grated horse-radish 1 teaspoon vinegar Cook chopped green pepper and chopped onion in savory fat for five minutes. Add flour, stock, tomatoes, and simmer fifteen minutes. Rub through sieve and season with salt and pepper. Just before serving add grated horseradish and vinegar.
A thin tomato soup finished with raw horseradish and vinegar, which is where its character comes from. Everything before that step is a routine roux-thickened tomato broth.
- Add the horseradish off the heatHeat drives off much of grated horseradish's pungency, and vinegar simmered into the soup just reads sour. Stir both in after the pot is off the burner, taste, then serve.
- Savory fatThis is the drippings jar: bacon fat, rendered beef or pork fat, or the skimmings off a stock. Butter works, or use 4 tablespoons of any fat you would sauté in. The name signals it should not be a neutral oil.
- StockA quart of beef or chicken stock. If you use commercial broth, which is usually well salted, hold back on the salt until the final seasoning.
- A pint of tomatoesAbout 2 cups, or a 14.5-to-15-oz can with its juice, which runs slightly short. Fresh tomatoes should be peeled and roughly chopped; the soup goes through a sieve anyway.
- SievingRubbing through a sieve was the usual route to a smooth soup at the time. A blender or immersion blender does it in seconds, though a pass through a fine strainer afterward still catches pepper skins and tomato seeds.
- HorseradishFresh grated root is what the recipe means. Bottled prepared horseradish is packed in vinegar, so if you use it, start with 2 tablespoons drained and skip or reduce the added teaspoon of vinegar.
- ConsistencyTwo tablespoons of flour to a quart and a half of liquid gives a soup barely thicker than broth. That is intended; it is a first course, not a chowder.
- YieldAbout six cups, or four to six small servings.