Skip to main content
Main

Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with beans, pork, thyme, eggs, lemon, butter, and optional beef or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Place the beans in a kettle and cover with water.

  2. When boiling, stir in a small piece of baking soda and let boil briefly.

  3. Drain the water and add fresh water with a small piece of pork.

  4. Cook until the beans are tender.

Finish the soup

  1. Remove the beans and press them through a colander into the cooking water.

  2. Tie thyme in a small bag and add it to the pot to simmer for a few minutes.

  3. Add the quartered hard-boiled eggs, sliced lemon, butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Add a piece of fresh raw beef until cooked through, but do not serve it in the soup.

  5. Alternatively, add rich milk and butter.

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. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Beans + thymetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together488 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Form the body of the soup once cooked and pressed, thickening the cooking water.
Baking soda
Raises the pot's alkalinity, which softens the bean skins and speeds tenderizing.
Pork
Adds savory, meaty flavor to the cooking water as the beans simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that gives the soup a smoother mouthfeel.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the rich soup.

The step that matters

Adding baking soda to the boiling beans. Too much baking soda can make beans taste soapy or mushy, and it must be added in only a small amount while the water is boiling so the beans soften evenly without breaking down entirely.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, thyme, egg, lemon, butter, pepper, beef):

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Sesamefits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Chickpeafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, thyme, egg, lemon, butter, pepper, beef. 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.

More bean soup recipes

Black 138Haricot 45White 36Baked 31Turtle 22Lima 16 See all 179 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipes