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Soup

A General Recipe for Soups Made From Beans, Peas, Lentils, Cowpeas, and Other Legumes

A soup made by simmering soaked beans, peas, lentils, cowpeas, and other legumes in water or stock, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and lentils match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 135 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A General Recipe for Soups Made From Beans, Peas, Lentils, Cowpeas, and Other Legumes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the dried legumes in water overnight.

  2. Drain the legumes and add water or stock.

Cook

  1. Cook slowly on the stove for three hours or in a fireless cooker for four to five hours, until tender.

  2. Renew the water as it boils away.

Finish

  1. Strain and thicken the soup with the butter and flour rubbed together.

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 + lentilstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beans + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together949 recipes

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

  3. Lentils + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peas + lentilstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried legumes
Provide the main body and protein of the soup, softening into a thick texture when cooked.
Butter or savory fat
Adds richness and carries flavor, and coats the flour to help it thicken smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells with heat, giving the broth body.

The step that matters

Cook until fully tender. Dried legumes need long, gentle cooking to soften their starches and skins; stopping early leaves them firm and grainy. Keeping the liquid topped up prevents scorching and keeps the soup from concentrating too much.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beans, lentils, 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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