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Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from soaked beans, ham, butter, flour, and stock, seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,733 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans in cold water for 12 hours.

  2. Place the ham in a small sack.

Make the soup

  1. In a kettle, combine the soaked beans, ham, and water, and boil slowly until the beans are very soft.

  2. Remove the ham and beans from the liquid and mash the beans finely.

  3. Return the ham and mashed beans to the liquid, add the soup stock and seasoning, and bring to a boil.

Can

  1. Fill glass jars and tin cans while hot, partially sealing the jars.

  2. Process for 2 hours using a hot‑water bath, 90 minutes with a water‑seal outfit, 75 minutes with a 5‑lb. steam‑pressure outfit, or 60 minutes with a pressure cooker.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour 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

Beans
Mashing them releases starch that thickens the soup and gives it body.
Ham
Adds savory, smoky flavor and some fat to the broth.
Soup stock
Forms the main liquid and provides the base flavor of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness, fat, and a rounder mouthfeel to the soup.
Flour
Its starch thickens the liquid as it heats with the soup.

The step that matters

Processing time and method. Beans and stock are low-acid foods, so the sealed jars must reach the full time for the chosen method. Shorter processing can leave heat-resistant spores alive, which is a safety risk in canned food.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, pepper, butter, 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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