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Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with black beans, potatoes, turnip, parsnip, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the soup bone in 2 quarts of water until the meat separates from the bone.

  2. Remove the bone and add the soaked black beans.

  3. Boil for 1.5 hours.

  4. Add the sliced potatoes, turnip, and parsnip.

  5. Boil for an additional 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, sprinkle in a few dry bread crumbs.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beans + parsniptop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Beans + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Potato + parsniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Black beans
Provide the main body and starch that thicken the soup as they cook.
Potatoes
Break down partly during simmering, adding starch that thickens the broth.
Soup bone
Releases collagen and flavour into the water as it simmers.
Dry bread crumbs
Add a little body and soak up liquid at the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Add the bread crumbs just before serving. Bread crumbs soften and dissolve into hot liquid quickly, so adding them late keeps some texture and controls how thick the soup becomes.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, turnip, parsnip, bread):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, turnip, parsnip, 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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