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Puree of Bean Soup with Crusts

A pureed navy bean soup thickened with stock, seasoned with mustard, butter, parsley, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Puree of Bean Soup with Crusts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil meat and marrow bones in 1 gallon of water with assorted vegetables until reduced by half.

  2. Strain the stock and skim off the fat.

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil the beans with a pinch of baking soda until soft.

  2. Mash the beans through a sieve.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the bean puree with the soup stock.

  2. Stir constantly and do not let it boil.

  3. Add mustard, butter, parsley, and minced red pepper just before serving.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Navy beans
Break down into a puree that thickens the soup and gives it body.
Soup stock
Provides the liquid base and the main savory flavor of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Made mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that cuts through the richness of the soup.

The step that matters

Stir constantly and do not let it boil. Once the bean puree is combined with the stock, boiling can cause it to scorch on the bottom of the pot and separate or turn grainy. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the starch-rich puree evenly dispersed and the texture smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, mustard, parsley, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, mustard, parsley, pepper. 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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