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Soup

Soups Made From Dried Beans, Peas, or Cowpeas

A soup made by cooking soaked beans or legumes 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 overnight.

  2. Drain the soaked beans and add fresh water.

Cook and strain

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

  2. Strain the mixture to remove the skins.

Finish the soup

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

  2. 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

Navy beans
Their cooked pulp gives the soup its body and thickness.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, building a savory base flavor.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic background note as it simmers.
Flour
Its starch swells with heat and thickens the soup once cooked through.
Butter
Its fat coats the flour and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Binding the soup with flour and butter. Flour mixed with butter should be blended into the hot soup and simmered. Stirring it in well prevents lumps, and simmering swells the starch fully so the soup thickens and the raw flour taste cooks off.

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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