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Bean Soup

A hearty soup of dried beans, salt pork, onion, butter, and flour, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Wash the beans.

  2. Soak the beans overnight in 3 quarts of cold water.

  3. Drain and rinse the beans in 2 waters to remove any rank flavor.

Simmer the soup

  1. Combine the pork and beans with 4 quarts of cold water.

  2. Bring the mixture to a gentle boil.

  3. Boil for 6 hours.

  4. Season the soup with salt and pepper.

  5. Strain the mixture.

  6. Return the strained soup to the pot.

  7. Bring the soup to a boil.

Thicken and serve

  1. Melt the butter or drippings in a separate saucepan.

  2. Add the flour to the melted butter or drippings.

  3. Cook the flour mixture until light brown.

  4. Stir the flour mixture into the soup.

  5. Boil the soup for an additional 5 minutes.

  6. Serve with toasted bread and the pork.

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

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

  2. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 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 beans
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during long boiling.
Salt pork
Adds savory, fatty flavor that seasons the broth as it simmers.
Butter or drippings
Carries the flour and adds rich fat flavor to the thickening roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup once cooked in fat into a roux and stirred in.

The step that matters

Cook the flour mixture until light brown. Cooking flour in fat develops a nutty flavor and removes raw starch taste; stopping too early leaves a pasty taste, while overcooking scorches it and makes it bitter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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