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Soup

Bean Soup

A simple soup of beans, salt pork, water, onion, and salt simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine beans, salt pork, cold water, onion, and salt in a pot.

  2. Cover and boil for 4 to 5 hours.

  3. Rub the mixture through a colander.

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 + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

Beans
Their starch softens during the long cook and, once pressed through, thickens the soup into a body.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the broth as it cooks.
Onion
Adds aromatic, savory depth to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Cover and boil for 4 to 5 hours. Dried beans need a long, sustained cook to soften fully. Starch in the beans must gelatinize before the mixture can be pressed smooth. Stopping early leaves grainy, firm beans that will not pass through the colander well.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Soybeanfits about as well
  4. Peanutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion. 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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