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Dried Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with dried white beans, pork, optional beef, celery, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Dried Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the dried white beans overnight.

  2. In a soup pot, combine the pork, its bones, and the optional beef. Season the meat with pepper and add 6 quarts of water.

Cook

  1. Bring to a boil, skimming off any scum.

  2. Drain the soaked beans and add them to the pot along with the celery or celery seed.

  3. Boil slowly until the meat is tender and the beans dissolve.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a colander into a tureen.

  2. Add small squares of toasted bread to the soup before serving.

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

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

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried white beans
Break down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Lean fresh pork
Releases flavor and gelatin into the broth as it simmers until tender.
Pork bones
Add savory depth and body to the broth as they cook.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic vegetal flavor to the soup.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until the meat is tender and the beans dissolve. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the meat break down into gelatin and lets the beans soften fully, while a hard boil can toughen meat and leave the beans broken or unevenly cooked.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pork, beef, pepper, bread):

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, beef, pepper, bread. 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.

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