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Portsmouth Bean Soup

A hearty bean soup made with beef, salt pork, black beans, carrots, onions, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Portsmouth Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the black beans overnight.

  2. Chop the beef and salt pork.

Cook

  1. Boil them with the soaked beans, grated carrot, and chopped onions in 4 quarts of water.

  2. Boil for 5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup, then add the chopped hard-boiled eggs, salt, and pepper to taste.

  2. Serve with sliced lemon.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Black beans
Form the body of the soup and provide most of its thick texture.
Round of beef
Adds meaty flavor and richness to the broth during the long boil.
Salt pork
Contributes fat and savory depth to the broth as it simmers.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and savory base flavor to the soup.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and color to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil for 5 hours. A long, steady simmer is needed to fully soften the dried beans and draw flavor from the meats. Letting the pot boil too hard can break beans apart and cloud the broth, so keep it at a gentle, steady simmer and top up water as needed.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, egg, beans, carrot, onion, pepper):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, egg, beans, carrot, onion, 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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