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Soup

Dried Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from dried beans, water, vegetables, nut butter, and flour, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dried Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and soak the dry beans in cold water overnight.

  2. The next morning, place the beans in a soup kettle with 4 quarts of cold water.

Cook and strain

  1. Add the grated onion, sliced turnip, and sliced carrot.

  2. Boil the ingredients slowly for 3 hours, or until the beans are tender.

  3. Rub the cooked mixture through a sieve into the kettle with the broth.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the smooth bean mixture with a little cold water, then add the nut butter and white flour.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and serve with croutons.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Dry beans
Form the body of the soup, and when cooked and sieved they thicken it.
Nut butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the soup a rounder, smoother mouthfeel.
White flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells with heat and liquid.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil the ingredients slowly for 3 hours. A slow simmer lets the beans soften evenly and fully without breaking apart or scorching on the bottom of the kettle. Stop only when the beans are tender, since undercooked beans stay firm and grainy when sieved.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, turnip, carrot, 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.

More bean soup recipes

Black 138Haricot 45White 36Baked 31Turtle 22Lima 16 See all 179 →

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