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Bean Soup

A thickened bean soup made with beef stock, white beans, salt, pepper, coriander, and wheat flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and coriander match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,261 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. Cook the beans until soft.

  3. Pass the cooked beans through a 16‑mesh sieve or a tomato pulping machine.

Make the soup

  1. Combine the beans with the beef stock, salt, white pepper, and coriander in a kettle.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add the wheat flour to create a paste.

  4. Cook until the soup begins to thicken.

Can and process

  1. Fill the soup into cans.

  2. Exhaust the cans for 3 minutes.

  3. Process the cans for 45 minutes at 235°F (113°C).

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 + coriandertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,261 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Beans + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together166 recipes

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

  3. Coriander + wheattop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Beef + wheattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together319 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

White beans
Provide the main body and bulk of the soup once cooked and pureed.
Beef soup stock
Supplies the liquid base and savory flavor of the soup.
Wheat flour
Thickens the soup into a paste-like body as it cooks.

The step that matters

Add the wheat flour to create a paste. Flour must be stirred in well so it hydrates evenly; if added in clumps or to a cold mixture, it forms lumps and the soup thickens unevenly. Keep the mixture moving as it heats so the starch gelatinizes smoothly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, beans, coriander, wheat, flour):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, beans, coriander, wheat, flour. 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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