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Bean Soup with Salt Pork

A hearty bean soup flavored with salt pork, pepper, and browned stale bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,733 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Soup with Salt Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans and salt pork in fresh water overnight.

Cook the soup

  1. Put the beans in a large pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Add 15 pounds of salt pork and continue boiling until tender, then remove the pork.

  3. In a separate pot, boil the remaining salt pork until tender.

  4. Season the bean soup with pepper.

  5. Cut the stale bread into pieces, brown it in the oven, and stir it into the soup.

  6. Optionally, add 1 gallon of the stock from boiling the pork to the soup.

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

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

  2. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

  3. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Beans + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together332 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 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
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during cooking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the broth as it simmers.
Stale bread
Browned pieces add toasty flavor and body when stirred into the soup.

The step that matters

Boiling the beans until tender. Dried beans need sustained simmering to soften fully. Stopping early leaves them firm, while the salt pork added with the beans contributes fat and salt that shape the broth's flavor.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Lima beansfits about as well
  3. Peasfits less well
  4. Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, bread. 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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