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
Cover the beans with cold water and soak for 12 hours.
Dice the ham and place it in a small cage.
Cook and pulp
Add the drained beans and ham to the boiling water and cook for 2 hours, or until the beans are very soft.
Remove the beans and ham from the kettle, run the beans through a rotary pulper, and return them to the kettle.
Add the pepper, salt, stock, and ham from the cage to the kettle.
Can
Place the mixture in cans, cap them, tip, and process.
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.
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Beans + hamtop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together140 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
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Ham + white peppertop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together535 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
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Beans + white peppertop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Break down into a thick, smooth body when cooked and pulped, giving the soup its main texture.
- Ham
- Adds savory, smoky meat flavor that seasons the stock and beans during cooking.
- Stock
- Provides the liquid base and carries the flavor of the other ingredients.
The step that matters
Cook the beans until very soft. Dry pea beans must be fully tender before pulping; undercooked beans stay grainy and will not purée smoothly through the pulper.
Swap the white pepper
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, ham):
- Capersfits better
- Celeryfits better
- Clovefits better
- 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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