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Soups Made From Dried Beans, Peas, or Cowpeas

A soup made by cooking dried beans, peas, or cowpeas with onion, celery, and salt, then thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,159 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Soups Made From Dried Beans, Peas, or Cowpeas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans or legumes in water for several hours or overnight.

  2. Drain the soaking water and add fresh water.

Cook and finish

  1. Cook the beans until tender with onion, celery, and salt.

  2. Strain the mixture to remove the skins.

  3. Dilute or boil down the juice and pulp to the desired soup consistency.

  4. Bind the soup with a mixture of flour 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. Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,159 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  4. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Dried navy beans, black beans, lentils, or cowpeas
Form the body of the soup, thickening into a purée when cooked and strained.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter, giving it a smoother, heavier body.
Butter
Combines with flour to bind the soup and add richness.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens during cooking.

The step that matters

Bind the soup with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked in fat before it is stirred into liquid; otherwise it clumps and leaves a raw, pasty taste and uneven thickening.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, flour, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, flour, butter. 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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