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Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with dried white beans, beef, bacon, celery, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. In a large soup pot, combine the beef, bones, and bacon. Season the meat with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add 6 quarts of water and bring to a boil. Skim off any scum that forms on the surface.

Simmer and serve

  1. Drain the soaked beans and add them to the pot along with the celery or celery seed.

  2. Boil slowly until the meat is tender and the beans are dissolved.

  3. Strain the soup into a tureen or serve with the beans intact. If serving with beans, remove the meat and bones with a fork before serving.

  4. Add small squares of toasted bread to the soup before serving.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  5. Beans + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 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 white beans
Break down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Lean fresh beef
Becomes tender during slow boiling and flavours the broth.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky savour that enriches the broth.
Celery
Contributes aromatic flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until the meat is tender and the beans are dissolved. A rolling boil can toughen meat and break beans unevenly, while slow simmering lets collagen in the beef soften gradually and the beans break down smoothly into the broth.

“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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