Carnavalssoep

For the last several years, online recipes for a dish called carnavalssoep (a rich tomato based soup with peppers, leeks, white beans, ground beef and smoked sausage) have been appearing with increasing frequency. Depending on where you look, it may also be called truujensoep, oudewijvensoep, or aldewievensoep. I first encountered it while searching for oudewijvenkoek and was immediately intrigued. I am a Limburgse at heart and grew up immersed in local carnaval traditions, from the festivities beginning on November 11 through Ash Wednesday, yet I had never heard of this soup before.

Unlike many Dutch dishes whose origins can be traced through old cookbooks, regional archives, or family notebooks, carnavalssoep seems to appear quite suddenly. There are no clear references in older culinary literature, no mentions in early twentieth-century household manuals, and no obvious regional variations passed down through generations. Instead, the soup enters the internet already presented as something familiar and traditional from the start. 

Dutch food culture has always absorbed new influences and made them its own. What begins as a personal preference, a local joke, or a practical solution can, within a generation, be remembered as tradition. A well-known example is the kapsalon, now a staple in snack bars across the Netherlands. Yet the dish did not exist before 2003, when a Rotterdam hairdresser asked his local shoarma shop to combine fries, meat, cheese, and salad into one tray. Other customers began ordering “the kapsalon,” and within a few years it had spread nationwide: a modern invention that already feels deeply rooted in Dutch food culture.

But back to the soup. The earliest version of the carnavalssoep recipe I have been able to find dates from 2009. Many online descriptions for this soup repeat the same claims almost verbatim: that it is traditional, that it was made by old women, and that it follows a familiar set of ingredients, with only minor variations. The repetition itself gives the impression of age and authenticity, but this is perhaps a gentle reminder that not everything presented online as tradition truly is one. 

Carnavalssoep may therefore not be an old tradition at all. Perhaps it is something more interesting: a new tradition in the making. Food history, like memory, is easily reshaped through repetition. A story told often enough begins to feel true, even when its origins are recent. That does not make the dish any less enjoyable (it's a hearty stick-to-your-ribs kind of soup, perfect for cold weather!) but it does invite us to remain curious about where our food stories come from. 

The recipe can be adjusted to your liking. I rolled the beef into small balls and simmered them in the soup. If you don't have access to beans in tomato sauce, use regular white beans and two tablespoons of tomato paste. Pork and beans is also an option. 

Carnavalssoep

1 Tablespoon (15 grams) butter

1 lb (500 grams) ground beef

1 large onion, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

3 bell peppers, diced (one red, one green, one yellow)*

1 large leek, cut in half moons

1 can (15.5 oz/ 440 grams) beans in tomato sauce 

3 cups (0.75 liter) tomato sauce

3 cups (0.75) water

1 smoked sausage, sliced

3 bouillon cubes

2 bay leaves

1 Tablespoon brown sugar

1 Tablespoon sambal or hot sauce

Salt to taste

Melt the butter and fry the ground beef until no longer pink, then add the onion, garlic, peppers, and leeks. Sauté the vegetables until they have a little bit of a char and the onion is no longer raw. Add the can of beans, stir everything well and then transfer the content to a crockpot, slow cooker, or stockpot. 

Add in the tomato sauce and the water, the bay leaves, the smoked sausage and the bouillon cubes. Simmer for a good fifteen minutes, then taste and adjust the salt level. Stir in the brown sugar and the sambal or hot sauce, and you're ready to party! 

* the traditional Limburg carnaval colors!