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Bean Soup

A creamy soup made from dried white beans, water, butter, salt, pepper, and served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,733 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Wash the beans.

  2. Soak the beans overnight.

  3. Drain the beans.

  4. Boil the beans in 2 quarts of fresh water.

  5. Drain the beans again.

Make the soup

  1. Return the beans to the kettle with 2 quarts of fresh boiling water.

  2. Add a pinch of baking soda.

  3. Boil until the mixture is mushy.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  5. Add enough boiling water to achieve a cream-like thickness.

  6. Stir in the butter, salt, and pepper to taste.

  7. Let the soup boil once.

  8. Serve with croutons.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 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

Dried white soup beans
Form the main body of the soup as they soften and break down into a thick purée.
Baking soda
Raises the cooking water's alkalinity, helping the beans soften and turn mushy.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve. Pushing the cooked beans through a sieve removes skins and fibres, giving the smooth, cream-like texture the soup depends on. Skipping or rushing it leaves a grainy soup.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Walnutfits about as well
  2. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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