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Dried Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with dried white beans, lean beef, bacon, celery, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Dried Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the dried white beans overnight.

  2. Cut the beef into pieces and place in a soup pot with the bones, broken into pieces.

  3. Add the lean bacon, cut into small pieces.

  4. If available, add any leftover undercooked roasted beef and its bones.

  5. Season the meat with pepper and pour in 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 chopped celery or celery seed.

  3. Boil slowly until the meat is tender and the beans are dissolved.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Beans + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 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.
Beef
Releases flavour and gelatin into the broth as it simmers until tender.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savoury fat that enriches the broth's flavour.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savoury flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until the meat is tender and the beans are dissolved. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the meat break down into gelatin while the beans soften and break apart. A hard, rapid boil can toughen meat proteins and cloud the broth.

“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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