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Bean Soup or Puree

A bean soup made with soaked beans, water, salt pork, spices, and finished with a roux and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bean Soup or Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil the soaked beans in 4 cups of cold water.

  2. When boiling, add baking soda and pour off the water.

Make the soup

  1. Add 2 quarts of fresh water and the salt pork, then boil for 3 hours until beans pass through a sieve.

  2. Strain the beans and season with salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  3. Make a roux with flour and melted butter, then add to the soup.

  4. Let it boil, then stir in the sweet cream.

Serve

  1. Serve with toasted bread squares or fried bread in each dish.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  4. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

  5. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Soaked beans
Form the main body of the soup once boiled and pressed through a sieve.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the cooking water, helping the beans soften and break down.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter into a roux.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat, and combines with flour to form the roux.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture at the end.

The step that matters

Boiling the beans for 3 hours until they pass through a sieve. The beans must be cooked long enough to become fully soft; undercooked beans stay grainy and will not purée smoothly through a sieve.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, flour, butter, cream, bread):

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Beansthe original
  4. Pistachiofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, flour, butter, cream, 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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Black 138Haricot 45White 36Baked 31Turtle 22Lima 16 See all 179 →

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