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Italian Soup

A warm soup made from baked beans, tomatoes, butter, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Italian Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the baked beans in water until they are like porridge.

  2. Strain the beans and mix with strained tomatoes, butter, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cook the mixture well 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 + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Baked beans
Form the body of the soup, breaking down into a thick, porridge-like base.
Strained tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid body that balances the sweetness of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and a smooth, rich mouthfeel to the soup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the tomato's acidity.

The step that matters

Cooking the beans until porridge-like. Beans must soften fully so they break down and thicken the soup; undercooked beans stay firm and grainy, and the mixture will not blend smoothly after straining.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, sugar, pepper. 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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