Skip to main content
Main

Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from soaked beans, onion, beef fat, and optional pork or ham bone, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bean Soup

2 quarts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight in 2 quarts of water.

  2. Drain the beans.

Cook the soup

  1. Add fresh water, onion, and beef fat.

  2. Cook until very soft.

  3. Mash or press through a colander to remove the skins.

  4. Add enough water to make 2 quarts of somewhat thick soup.

  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  6. Add pork or a ham bone, red pepper, or chopped vegetables an hour 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during cooking.
Beef fat
Adds richness and a savory flavor to the soup.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Cook until very soft. The beans must be fully tender before mashing or straining; undercooked beans stay firm and grainy, and they will not break down into a smooth, thick soup.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, beef, pepper, pork, turnip):

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Okrafits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, beef, pepper, pork, turnip. 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.

More bean soup recipes

Black 138Haricot 45White 36Baked 31Turtle 22Lima 16 See all 179 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipes