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Kidney-bean Soup

A soup made from soaked kidney beans, onion, salt, peanut butter, and thickened with flour or gluten.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and peanut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,043 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Kidney-bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the kidney beans overnight.

  2. In the morning, cook the beans in boiling water until tender.

  3. Pass the cooked beans through a colander.

Make the soup

  1. Season with grated onion, salt, and peanut butter.

  2. Add enough boiling water to make 2 quarts total.

  3. Thicken the soup with 2 teaspoons of flour or gluten.

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. Onion + peanuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,043 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Kidney beans + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Peanut + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Kidney beans
Form the body of the soup and give it its thick, creamy texture once passed through a colander.
Grated onion
Adds aromatic flavour and a little moisture to the soup.
Peanut butter
Adds richness and a nutty, savoury depth to the soup.
Flour or gluten
Thickens the soup as its starch or protein absorbs liquid and swells when heated.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with flour or gluten. Flour or gluten must be fully mixed in and heated so the starch swells and thickens the liquid. Added in lumps or without enough stirring, it stays gritty and uneven.

Swap the kidney beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, peanut, butter, flour):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, peanut, 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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