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Bean Soup

A hearty soup of navy beans, salt pork, tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, celery, turnip, cloves, bay leaf, thyme, baking soda, milk or cream, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight in water.

  2. Drain the beans.

  3. Cover the beans with fresh water.

  4. Add baking soda to the water.

  5. Boil the beans for 5 minutes.

  6. Drain the beans again.

Make the soup

  1. Cover the beans with water.

  2. Add all ingredients except baking soda.

  3. Boil gently until the beans are soft.

  4. Press the mixture through a colander.

Finish and serve

  1. Take only what is needed for one meal.

  2. Return the portion to the stove.

  3. Thin the soup with milk or cream.

  4. Add coarse sea salt to taste.

  5. Heat the soup.

  6. Serve through a puree sieve.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  4. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Tomato + celerytop 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

Navy beans
Form the main body of the soup and thicken it when pressed through a sieve.
Salt pork or bacon
Adds fat and savory depth that carries through the whole soup.
Baking soda
Raises the cooking water's alkalinity, helping the bean skins soften.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a bright flavor that balances the richness of the pork.
Onions
Build sweetness and aroma as the base flavor of the soup.
Milk or cream
Adds fat and smoothness, softening the texture when thinning the soup.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the beans are soft. A hard boil breaks beans apart and clouds the broth, while gentle heat lets them soften evenly so they press smoothly through the sieve.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pork, tomato, onion, garlic, carrot, celery):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, tomato, onion, garlic, carrot, celery. 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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