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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
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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. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Stir in a small piece of baking soda and let it boil for a moment.

  4. Drain the water.

Cook and purée

  1. Add fresh water with a small piece of pork.

  2. Cook until the beans are well done.

  3. Remove the beans.

  4. Press the beans through a colander into the cooking water.

  5. Tie thyme in a small bag.

  6. Add the thyme bag to the pot and simmer for a few minutes.

Finish the soup

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

  2. Add a piece of fresh raw beef and let it cook through, but do not serve it in the soup.

  3. Alternatively, substitute the beef with 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 main body of the soup once cooked and pressed, thickening it.
Baking soda
Raises the pot's alkalinity, which helps beans soften faster.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the soup.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich soup.

The step that matters

Pressing the beans through a colander. Beans must be fully softened before pressing, otherwise the purée stays grainy and skins are hard to strain out. Pressing into the hot cooking water keeps the soup smooth and evenly thick.

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 →

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