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Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from pea beans, ham, and seasonings, simmered in water and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and ham work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 140 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans and ham

  1. Cover the beans with cold water and soak for 12 hours.

  2. Dice the ham.

  3. Place the diced ham in a small cage.

  4. Drain the beans.

Cook and pulp

  1. Add the drained beans and ham to the boiling water.

  2. Cook for 2 hours, or until the beans are very soft.

  3. Remove the beans and ham from the kettle.

  4. Run the beans through a rotary pulper.

  5. Return the pulped beans to the kettle.

  6. Add the pepper, salt, stock, and ham from the cage to the kettle.

Can and process

  1. Place the mixture in cans.

  2. Cap the cans.

  3. Tip the cans.

  4. Process the cans.

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 + hamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together140 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Ham + white peppertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together535 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Beans + white peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together87 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Pea beans
Form the bulk of the soup and thicken it to a smooth body when softened and pulped.
Ham
Adds savory, meaty flavor to the stock and beans as it cooks.
Stock
Provides the liquid base and carries the seasoning through the soup.

The step that matters

Cook for 2 hours, or until the beans are very soft. The beans must be fully softened so they pulp smoothly and do not stay grainy. Underdone beans resist pulping and leave a rough texture in the finished soup.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, ham. 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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