Skip to main content
Main

String-bean Soup

A soup made from boiled string beans, blended into a pulp, thickened with butter and flour, and served over diced fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

String-bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil string beans in hot salted water until very tender.

  2. Drain and chop the beans, then rub them through a colander to a pulp.

Make the soup

  1. Pour the fat from the stock into a soup pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Skim the fat and stir in the bean pulp with butter and flour.

  3. Simmer for 15 minutes, add seasoning if necessary, and serve over diced fried bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beans + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together332 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

String beans
Provide the main body and flavor, becoming a thick pulp that gives the soup its texture.
Flour
Thickens the soup by binding with the fat and bean pulp as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounder flavor to the soup.
Fat from stock
Carries flavor and adds richness to the base of the soup.

The step that matters

Skim the fat and stir in the bean pulp with butter and flour. Flour must be fully incorporated into the hot fat before or as the pulp is added, otherwise it clumps and leaves raw floury lumps. Adding it to a simmering liquid while stirring keeps the thickening even.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes