Skip to main content
Main

Dried Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with dried white beans, beef, bacon, celery, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Dried Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the dried white beans overnight.

  2. In a soup pot, combine the beef, bones, and bacon. Season the meat with pepper.

  3. Add 6 quarts of water to the pot and bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Skim off any scum that rises to the surface.

  5. Drain the soaked beans.

Make the soup

  1. Add the drained beans to the pot along with the celery or celery seed.

  2. Boil slowly until the meat is tender and the beans are dissolved.

Serve

  1. Strain the soup into a tureen.

  2. Add toasted bread squares 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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beans + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dried white beans
Break down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Lean fresh beef
Releases savory flavour into the broth as it cooks until tender.
Lean bacon
Adds smoky, savory fat and flavour to the broth.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savory flavour to the soup.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until the meat is tender and the beans are dissolved. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the meat and starches in the beans break down slowly, giving a tender meat and a thick, smooth soup. A hard, fast boil can toughen the meat and leave the beans whole and the broth cloudy.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes