Name: Red Bean Soup
Ingredients: 2 cups cooked, mashed red beans; ½ cup tomato ketchup; 1 tablespoon sherry

Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Red Bean Soup

Ingredients

2 cups cooked, mashed red beans
½ cup tomato ketchup
1 tablespoon sherry

Directions

In a pot, combine the cooked, mashed red beans with tomato ketchup and sherry.
Stir well to mix all ingredients thoroughly.
Heat over medium until warmed through, then serve.

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.

Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,713 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + sherrytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together165 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Tomato + sherrytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together492 recipes

Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).
Ketchup + sherrytop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together177 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Tomato + ketchuptop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together754 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Red beans: Mashed beans thicken the soup and give it body and an earthy base.
Tomato ketchup: Adds sweetness, acidity, and a reddish color.
Sherry: Adds acidity and aromatic notes that brighten the soup.

“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.