Name: Bean and Tomato Soup
Ingredients: 1 pint boiled and mashed beans; 1 pint stewed tomatoes; ½ teaspoon salt; ½ cup cooked rice; boiling water (as needed)

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 ↓

Bean and Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Rub the boiled and mashed beans and stewed tomatoes together through a colander.
Add salt and cooked rice.
Pour in sufficient boiling water to achieve the desired soup consistency.

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.

Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,713 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + ricetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,017 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled and mashed beans: Provide the body and thickness of the soup as they break down.
Stewed tomatoes: Add moisture, acidity and a smooth base when pushed through a colander.
Cooked rice: Adds bulk and a soft, starchy texture that thickens the soup slightly.