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Dried Bean Soup

A soup made from dried beans, onion, carrot, turnip, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dried Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the dried beans in cold water, pick out defective ones, and soak them overnight in 1 quart of cold water.

  2. Peel and slice the onion, and fry it in a soup kettle with the butter or drippings.

  3. While the onion is browning, peel and slice the carrot and turnip, and add them to the kettle.

Cook the soup

  1. Add the soaked beans and 4 quarts of cold water to the kettle.

  2. Boil the ingredients slowly for 4 hours, or until the beans are tender enough to rub through a sieve.

  3. After sieving, return the beans and broth to the kettle.

  4. Rub together 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of flour to make a paste, then stir it into the soup until dissolved.

  5. Season the soup with salt and pepper, let it boil for 1 minute, and serve hot.

Serve

  1. Serve with bread cut into half-inch dice and browned in the oven.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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 beans
Form the main body of the soup and, once sieved, its thick texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour forms a paste that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when combined with butter into a paste and stirred in.
Onion
Browns in fat to build a sweet, savoury aromatic base for the soup.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and body to the soup as it cooks down.
Turnip
Adds mild earthy flavour and body as it softens during long simmering.

The step that matters

Boiling until the beans are tender enough to sieve. Beans must cook long enough for the starch and cell walls to soften fully; undercooked beans will not rub through a sieve and leave the soup grainy and thin.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, carrot, turnip, flour, pepper, bread):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, carrot, turnip, flour, pepper, 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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