Skip to main content
Main

Bean-soup with Bread

A hearty soup of beans, onion, carrots, and potatoes served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean-soup with Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans overnight in water.

  2. Drain and rinse the beans, then place them in a pot with 8 cups of fresh water.

Cook

  1. Add the chopped onion, carrots, and potatoes.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until the beans are tender, about 1-2 hours.

  3. Season with salt to taste and serve with bread.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  3. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

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

  4. Beans + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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 beans
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as their starches soften during simmering.
Potatoes
Break down slightly during simmering, adding body and making the broth creamier.
Carrots
Add sweetness and soften during simmering, rounding out the soup's flavor.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and depth as it softens in the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering the beans until tender. Dried beans contain starches and compounds that need prolonged, gentle simmering to soften fully. Stopping early leaves them firm and hard to digest, and a hard boil can break them apart, so keep the heat low and steady.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, carrot, potato, bread):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, carrot, potato, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes