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Baked Bean Soup

A soup made with baked beans, water, onion, celery, stewed tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Baked Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine the baked beans, water, onion, and celery.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Add the stewed tomatoes and Worcestershire sauce.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a separate pan, cook the flour and butter together, then add to the soup.

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

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Baked beans
Provide the main body and starch that give the soup its thick, hearty texture.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter and stirred in, giving it body.
Butter
Cooks with the flour to form a roux that helps thicken and enrich the soup.
Stewed tomatoes
Add acidity and a fruity tang that balances the richness of the beans.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter. If the flour and butter are added without being cooked together first, the soup can taste raw and may form lumps. Cooking the roux briefly before stirring it in gives smooth thickening.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, celery, tomato, sauce, pepper, flour, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, celery, tomato, sauce, pepper, flour, butter. 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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