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Bean and Celery Soup

A hearty soup made with dried beans, salt pork, lean beef, celery, onion, butter, and water, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Bean and Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a large pot, combine the beans, salt pork, beef, onion, and half of the celery cut into bits with the cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook until the beans are soft and the liquid is reduced by one-third.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine colander into the soup.

Finish and simmer

  1. Return the soup to the pot, season with pepper, and add the remaining celery cut into 1-inch lengths.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes, stirring often to prevent sticking.

  3. Set aside 1 quart of soup for later use, if possible.

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. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried beans
Provide the body and thickness, which breaks down into the soup when cooked and rubbed through a colander.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that carries through the long simmer into the broth.
Lean beef
Contributes meaty flavor to the broth as it cooks down with the beans.
Celery
Adds aromatic, herbal flavor; the remaining stalks keep a bit of crunch when added at the end.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavor to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stirring during the final simmer. Thick, starchy bean soup settles and scorches on the bottom of the pot easily, and frequent stirring keeps the solids suspended and prevents a burnt taste.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, beef, butter, pepper, 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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