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Italian Soup

A hearty Italian soup with ham, bacon, beans, cabbage, rice, sausages, and vegetables, finished with Parmesan and croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Prepare the soup

  1. Combine raw ham, chopped bacon, and haricot beans in a stewpan.

  2. Wash and shred the savoy cabbage, then add it to the stewpan.

  3. Pour in the broth and place the stewpan over heat.

  4. Chop the celery roots to fill a cup.

  5. Add the chopped celery after the broth has boiled for 10 minutes.

Cook the soup

  1. Add the beans, green peas, asparagus heads, rice, smoked sausages, and chopped tomato.

  2. Move the stewpan to the side of the fire and simmer until the rice is cooked.

  3. Mix in grated Parmesan cheese to taste.

Serve

  1. Remove the ham and sausages.

  2. Cut the sausages into small pieces.

  3. Place the sausages in a soup tureen.

  4. Pour the soup and vegetables over the sausages.

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

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

  2. Beans + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together292 recipes

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

  3. Peas + asparagustop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together808 recipes

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

  4. Beans + ricetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,017 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Hold their shape while adding body and starch that thickens the soup.
Savoy cabbage
Adds bulk and a tender, slightly sweet vegetable texture as it cooks down.
Rice
Releases starch as it cooks, thickening the broth and giving the soup body.
Smoked sausages
Contribute smoky, savoury flavour and fat that enriches the broth.
Raw ham
Flavours the broth with savoury, salty meat richness as it simmers.
Chopped bacon
Renders fat and smoky savouriness into the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer until the rice is cooked. Rice keeps absorbing liquid and releasing starch as it sits, so it can turn mushy or over-thicken the soup if simmered too long. Gentle heat keeps the soup at a steady simmer rather than a hard boil, which would break up the vegetables and beans.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, beans, celery, peas, asparagus, rice, tomato):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, beans, celery, peas, asparagus, rice, tomato. 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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