Creole Soup
Cook three tablespoons of chopped green peppers and two tablespoons of chopped onion in one-fourth cup of butter for five minutes. Add a heaping tablespoon of flour, one quart of stock, a pint of tomatoes and simmer fifteen minutes. Rub through a sieve and season with salt and pepper. Just before serving add two tablespoons of grated horseradish and one teaspoon of vinegar.
A quick roux-thickened tomato and pepper soup, closer to a light bisque than to anything in the Louisiana gumbo family. It comes together in under half an hour and needs only a few translations.
- Quantities in modern termsOne-fourth cup of butter is 4 tablespoons (2 oz). A quart of stock is 4 cups, a pint of tomatoes 2 cups — canned whole or crushed tomatoes with their juice work directly.
- Green peppersIn American cookery of this period this means an ordinary sweet bell pepper, not a chili. If you want heat, add it deliberately and separately.
- The horseradish is the pointIt goes in off the heat, just before serving, because cooking destroys the volatile compounds that give it bite. Fresh grated root is what the book means; bottled horseradish is packed in vinegar, so drain it and cut back the added teaspoon of vinegar accordingly.
- Cook out the flourA heaping tablespoon of flour into that much butter is a loose roux. Stir it a minute or two before the stock goes in, or the finished soup carries a raw, pasty taste that the sieving will not remove.
- Sieving"Rub through a sieve" means pressing the solids through with the back of a ladle or a wooden spoon to make a smooth purée. A food mill gives the same result faster; a blender gives a thicker, more emulsified soup than the original intends, so thin it with a little extra stock if you use one.
- StockAn unspecified "stock" in cookery of this period was commonly a light beef or veal broth, though the recipe does not say. Chicken stock is the closest common substitute; vegetable stock works but leaves the soup tasting thin against the horseradish.
- YieldSomething over four cups after simmering and sieving — four to six first-course servings.
"Creole" on an American menu around 1900 rarely meant Louisiana cooking in any strict sense. It had become a general kitchen adjective for a tomato-and-pepper preparation, the same shorthand that produced Creole sauce, eggs Creole and creamed dishes tinted with tomato in hotel and household cookery all over the country. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns, issued its cook book to the same middle-class readership it sold sewing patterns to. The horseradish here is the interesting survival: stirred in off the heat, a cold, pungent garnish was a common Victorian and Edwardian trick for lifting an otherwise mild purée.