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Haricot Soup

A bean soup with cabbage, bacon, chili, onion, butter, garlic, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Haricot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the haricot beans in water until tender.

  2. In a separate pan, fry the sliced onion in butter until golden.

Make the soup

  1. Add the shredded cabbage, bacon, red chili, and salt to the pot.

  2. Let the mixture boil steadily for one hour, stirring frequently while it cooks.

  3. Add the fried onion and a pinch of garlic 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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Beans + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,935 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  4. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together635 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Provide the main body and starchy thickness of the soup as they cook until tender.
Butter
Carries the onion as it fries, adding richness and helping it turn golden.
Onion
Fried in butter until golden, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the soup.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and a mild sweetness as it simmers in the soup.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that flavours the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil the soup steadily for one hour. A steady boil lets the beans and cabbage soften fully and blends the flavours. Stirring helps keep starches from settling and sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, butter, garlic. 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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