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Cream of Bean Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled lima beans, flour, butter, beef stock, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream of Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil the dry lima beans for 6 to 8 hours.

  2. Mash the beans and pass them through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, rub together the flour and butter until smooth.

  2. Add the beef stock, salt, and sweet cream to the saucepan and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the mashed beans and serve hot with a slice of lemon in each bowl.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lima beans + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41 recipes

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

  4. Lima beans + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

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

  5. Lima beans + beeftop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together82 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Dry lima beans
Provide the main body and starch that thicken the soup when mashed.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock base so the soup becomes smooth and body-rich.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and smoothing the flour mixture.
Beef stock
Supplies the savoury liquid base that carries the soup's flavour.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and mellow richness, softening the soup's texture.

The step that matters

Boil the dry lima beans for 6 to 8 hours. Dry beans must be fully softened before mashing; undercooked beans stay firm and grainy, and they cannot pass smoothly through a sieve to create a silky soup.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pumpkinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lima beans, flour, butter, beef, cream. 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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