Name: Bean Soup
Ingredients: 1 pint dried beans; ⅓ cup rice (optional); butter; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Beans and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,017 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

1 pint dried beans
⅓ cup rice (optional)
butter
coarse sea salt

Directions

Prepare the beans

Soak the beans overnight in water.
Drain the beans and place them in a pot with cold water.
If using, add the rice to the pot.

Cook and finish

Boil slowly for about 2 hours.
Once cooked, rub the mixture through a colander.
Thin the soup with boiling water as needed.
Season with a little butter and coarse sea salt.

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.

Beans + ricetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,017 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

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, thickening it as they break down when cooked and rubbed through a colander.
Rice: Adds body and thickens the soup as it softens during the long simmer.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel at the finish.