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Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from dark red Mexican beans, beef bone, bacon, celery, onion, and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper 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 the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. In the morning, boil the beans until tender.

Make the soup

  1. Simmer the beef bone, bacon, celery, and onion in water for three hours to make stock.

  2. Mash the beans through a colander and add to the stock.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. Place croutons in a soup tureen and pour the soup over them.

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. Celery + peppertop 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 + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 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

Beans
Their starch thickens the soup as they are mashed into the stock, giving it body.
Beef bone
Simmering releases gelatin and flavor, giving the stock depth and body.
Bacon
Its rendered fat and smoky flavor enrich the stock.
Onion
Releases sweet, savory aromatics that build the flavor base of the stock.
Celery
Adds vegetal aroma that rounds out the flavor of the stock.

The step that matters

Mash the beans through a colander and add to the stock. Mashing the cooked beans breaks down their starch-rich cells so they dissolve into the liquid and thicken the soup. Beans must be fully tender first, or they will stay grainy and the soup will not thicken evenly.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Lentilsfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, onion, pepper. 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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