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Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with navy beans, water, fried onions, corn, potatoes, pork, red pepper, and seasoned with salt and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,211 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the navy beans overnight.

Cook the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the soaked beans, water, fried onions, corn, partly boiled potatoes, pork, red pepper, and salt.

  2. Bring to a boil and then simmer slowly for 5 to 6 hours.

  3. Pass the mixture through a colander or sieve, returning the pulp to the pot.

  4. Season the pulp with salt and cayenne pepper.

Serve

  1. In a tureen, place the fried bread squares.

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 + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Navy beans
Form the body of the soup, thickening it into a creamy pulp when sieved.
Potatoes
Add starch that helps thicken the soup and give it a smoother body.
Pork
Adds savory, meaty flavor to the long-simmered broth.
Onions
Provide sweetness and aroma from frying in butter, building the soup's base flavor.
Bread
Adds crisp, browned texture and richness from frying in butter or fat.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 5 to 6 hours. A gentle simmer lets the beans soften fully so they can be pressed through a sieve into a smooth pulp. A hard boil can break the mixture and scorch the bottom of the pot.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, corn, potato, pork, pepper, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, corn, potato, pork, pepper, 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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