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Bakbp Bean Soup

Soup of baked beans, water, onion, celery, tomato, seasoned with salt, paprika, chili sauce, thickened with butter and flour, served with toasted stale bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Bakbp Bean Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the soup

  1. Cook the baked beans, water, onion, celery, and tomato together for 40 minutes.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Season with salt, paprika, and chili sauce.

  4. Thicken with butter and flour.

Make the bread garnish

  1. Cut stale bread into thin slices and butter both sides of the slices.

  2. Cut the buttered slices into dice.

  3. Place the bread cubes on a baking sheet and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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 + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  3. Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Baked beans
Provide the main body and bulk of the soup as they break down during cooking.
Tomato
Adds acidity and body, balancing the sweetness of the beans.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and helps form the thickened base with flour.
Flour
Thickens the soup by swelling in the liquid once cooked with butter.
Chili sauce
Adds spice and tangy flavour to the seasoned soup.

The step that matters

Thicken with butter and flour. Flour needs fat and heat to cook out its raw taste and thicken evenly; adding it directly to hot liquid without first blending it with butter can form lumps.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, tomato, sauce, butter, flour, bread):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Cuminfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, tomato, sauce, butter, flour, bread. 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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