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Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with beans, salt pork, onion, cabbage, carrot, celery, and potato.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil the beans until tender.

  2. Drain the beans and mash them or pass them through a fine colander.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, add the mashed beans and 2 quarts of water.

  2. Add the salt pork, chopped onion, chopped cabbage, finely chopped carrot, chopped celery, and minced potato.

  3. Cook for 1 hour and serve.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beans + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Bulk and body; mashing them thickens the soup and gives it a creamy texture.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that carries through the broth.
Potato
Releases starch as it cooks, helping to thicken the soup slightly.
Onion
Builds savory depth and sweetness as it softens in the broth.

The step that matters

Boil the beans until tender. Beans must be fully softened before mashing, because dried beans that are undercooked stay firm and grainy and will not break down into a smooth base.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pork, onion, carrot, celery, potato):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, onion, carrot, celery, potato. 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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